


Changed

by addison116



Category: Walking Dead (TV)
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-05-24
Updated: 2015-01-11
Packaged: 2018-01-26 07:27:24
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 16
Words: 42,484
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1679837
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/addison116/pseuds/addison116
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Set after season 4, episode 13 "Alone." Beth was kidnapped, but she has managed to escape her captors. How has this ordeal changed her? How will she deal with the aftermath of her abduction and surviving on her own?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Ch.1

            She was running, but she didn’t know how long she had been running. Hours?  Days?  Weeks? Months?  Time was irrelevant; it just seemed to pass without her really knowing.  All she knew is that she had to run, and she couldn’t stop.  She had to run as fast and as far as her weak legs would carry her. She had to get away.

            Her knife was tightly clutched in her hand.  It was her lifeline, the only defense she had left. The blade bloody, just like her hands. It was the only thing keeping her safe from the walkers, the only reason she wasn’t back in that room.

            The low, guttural growls had grown silent, but still she kept running. It wasn’t the walkers she was afraid of anymore; it was the people.  Walkers were predictable.  They only wanted one thing: your flesh.  You could outrun walkers, hide from them, and easily kill them.  But people were different.  They had hidden agendas.  You couldn’t trust them.  They were dark, more monstrous than the dead that roamed the earth.

            She suddenly became aware of the fading daylight and the cramping of her legs. Every muscle in her body ached. She didn’t want to, but she knew that she needed to stop; she needed to rest.  So reluctantly she slowed her pace until she was walking.

            She didn’t know what to do.  She was alone.  There was nobody here to protect her or guide her through things.  Daryl wasn’t there to coach her through making a fire or finding a safe place to sleep.  Maggie wasn’t there to tell her that everything was going to be alright.  It was just her, and all she wanted to do was curl into herself and cry.  She wanted to cry for everything she’d been through, for everything that had been done to her, for everything and everyone she’d lost.  But she didn’t get to cry anymore.  There was no time for crying; there was only time for surviving.  She took a few deep breaths and collected herself, giving her a moment to organize her thoughts and priorities.

            Fire. She needed to make a small fire. It would help keep her warm throughout the night and allow her to see any approaching danger. The only problem was that she didn’t know how to make a fire without a mirror and glass.  She had watched Daryl do it dozens of times, and so she tried to remember everything he did. 

            Beth walked around the area looking for anything dry that she could use for tinder.  She found dry leaves and sticks, but there wasn’t much else.  She arranged the tinder into a nest.  She took the largest stick she had and used her knife to carve a small notch in it. Next she took another stick and placed it in the notch, and holding the stick between her two palms, she began to roll it back and forth. 

            She was mimicking Daryl’s every move, but her hands were shaking and she was already exhausted.  Her eyes were searching for a spark, for the smoke that would tell her that she had been successful, but it never came.  She couldn’t start the fire, and suddenly the reality of her situation came crashing down on her.

            Without a fire she couldn’t cook any food she was able to catch, if she could even hunt anything with just a knife.  She could already feel the temperature dropping, and it was only going to get colder.  She could barely see anything around her as the sun continued to set.  All she had was a knife to protect her, and she could only depend on herself.

            Beth leaned back against a tree and pulled her knees to her chest, tightly holding her knife in her hand.  She needed to stay awake.  She couldn’t fall asleep.  Her heart was racing and her body was still running on adrenaline, but she could feel the rush fading, and as it faded her eyes started to droop until they were too heavy to keep open any longer and sleep won over.

            She woke with a start, a scream strangled in her throat, but she wouldn’t let it escape.  She looked around her, taking in her surroundings.  She was safe, she wasn’t in that room, and despite her falling asleep, no walkers had stumbled upon her makeshift camp.

            One look at the sky told her that she had slept through the night. The sun was just beginning to peak through the leaves over her head, but the sky was still dim. She knew that she couldn’t stay here all day, but she desperately wanted to.  The grumble of her stomach coaxed her into moving.  She couldn’t remember the last time she had had anything to eat, and her body was craving for food, for water; it was slowly running out of energy to keep her moving.

            Beth slowly stood up, her legs aching from running for so long. She still didn’t know how long she had been out here, but she knew that it had at least been one day. She knew that she wouldn’t be able to kill anything with just her knife, and Daryl had never gotten around to showing her how to set snares, but there were edible plants out here.

            She continued walking further into the woods.  She wouldn’t go back in the direction that she had come from. The only way she could move was forward, away from the horror story that she had left behind.  She walked until her ears heard the faint sound of trickling of water.  She followed the sound until she found the source; a small stream.

            Beth fell to her knees, her throat on fire.  She knew it was probably a bad idea to drink straight from the stream.  Daryl’s voice was in the back of her head telling her that she needed to boil the water first, but she couldn’t get a fire started.  She placed her hands in the stream, the water turning red from the blood on her hands. She quickly washed the blood away and then stood up, Daryl’s voice winning her internal battle. She would walk a little further and try to find food.  If she couldn’t get a fire started she would come back to the stream and get a drink.

            She didn’t have to walk far to find what she was looking for. Grapes.  The same kind that she had found with Daryl shortly after escaping the prison.  She had grabbed them back then, saying that whenever they found who they were tracking they would need food, but in reality she had been trying focus her mind somewhere else than on Daryl’s words about faith and her father.  Now she was in desperate need for them, her stomach painful from its lack of food.

            She hastily started to pick them off of their vines, popping a few in her mouth as she went.  She didn’t have a bag to put them in, and if she put them in her pockets they would only get smashed. She ate as many as she could, which wasn’t many.  She had been starving, but as soon as she started eating the fruit, her hunger had been replaced with a heavy sinking feeling in her stomach.

            After she decided that she couldn’t eat anymore she began to walk again. By now the sun was high in the sky, and she guessed that it was noon.  She noticed that the trees around her were starting to thin, and she could make out something in the distance.

            Coming out of the woods she saw railroad tracks.  She looked them up and down and noticed a sign. She cautiously moved closer to read it. “Sanctuary for all, community for all.” There was also a map with an area circled in the middle of it.  Terminus. But that wasn’t what had caught her attention. Scrawled in red walker blood was another message.  “Glenn, go to Terminus. –Maggie, Sasha, Bob.”

* * *

 

             _“Got her chained up nice and good. She ain’t going nowhere.”_

_She heard her captor’s voices from behind the closed door as she struggled against the rope on her wrists. She was in a room, but it was almost pitch black.  The light the man had turned on when he had walked in was now off.  Not that the light would have helped any; her eyes were blindfolded, making it impossible to see._

_She was desperately pulling against the rope, but it was tied to something.  She couldn’t move far from where she was. Her head hurt; every inch of her hurt. She had been here for a while, probably two or three days, but she couldn’t be sure know how long, and she didn’t know what the man wanted from her.  She was waiting; waiting for Daryl.  She wasn’t going to give up her hope.  She stopped struggling when she heard more of the conversation taking place in a room just a few feet from where she was._

_“So, you think the two of ‘em were playin’ house there?” a gruff voice asked.  She didn’t recognize it, but she had a feeling she would grow accustomed to it._

_“Maybe. That man was probably just pickin’ a spot to get some tail for the night,” another man responded._

_“Think he made it?”_

_Beth heard a man’s low chuckle and a glass slam onto a hard surface.  “Nah.  You see all those biters?”_

_Biters? Is that what they called walkers? Her thoughts were interrupted when she heard something that immediately caught her attention._

_“We know he made it out of the house.  He was chasin’ after the car.”_

_“She must be good then if he was that determined.”_

_All of the men laughed at that, and Beth should have felt sick to her stomach at what they were implying, but she wasn’t.  Her mind was elsewhere. Daryl had made it out. He had chased after the car they had put her in; he had been chasing after her.  He was looking for her. She knew that he wouldn’t be able to catch up to a car, but he could track.  He could track the car to wherever she was.  She just had to wait.  She had to hold on a little while longer.  Daryl was coming for her. He would find her. She knew it._

_Beth leaned back against the wall and continued listening to their conversation.  They were still laughing, but the laughter was dying out. They were talking about Daryl still._

_“They were probably headin’ to Terminus.”_

_“Well, if that’s where he’s going he might as well be dead,” a man scoffed._

_Terminus? They hadn’t heard of it. She had no idea what they were talking about.  They hadn’t been going there.  They had been trying to find someplace to stay._

_“Probably saw the signs on the tracks.  ‘Terminus. Sanctuary for all, community for all,’” the man said mockingly.  “That’s just a bunch a bullshit.”_

_“Those people there are a bunch of psychopathic lunatics.  Offerin’ sanctuary and then chompin’ down on the people that go there.”_

_“Gotta eat somehow,” a man laughed._

_“Yeah, well, that’s not exactly my idea of a five star meal.”_

* * *

 

She looked at the sign again, her mind finally clearing from the memory of those men and their conversation.  Maggie had made it out of the prison, and so had Sasha and Bob.  She knew that she was nowhere near the prison, so they had traveled far, which meant that they had been able to survive; they had enough supplies to keep them going, and they had a destination.

            She prayed to a god that she no longer believed in that they hadn’t gone there, but if they had she knew that they would never make it out. They were as good as dead. She knew they were dead. And even if they were alive, she would never want to meet up with her family from the prison ever again. They wouldn’t accept her anymore, and she knew it.  She had changed. She wasn’t the girl they had known, and she would never be that person again.  So instead of following the tracks and making her way to Terminus with the hopes of reuniting with her sister, she crossed the tracks and disappeared back into the woods, hoping that nobody would ever find her.


	2. Chapter 2

Ch.2

            She had been walking through the woods when she had first seen it through the trees.  At first she didn’t know what it was, but as she got closer she realized that it was a cabin, probably a hunters cabin.  The weeds were growing wild, climbing up to reach the windows, and loose boards hung from the frame.

            She approached the cabin cautiously.  She didn’t think that anyone was staying there, but you could never be certain.  She peaked through one of the windows and saw that the small, one-roomed cabin was empty. The door creaked as she opened it, and she cringed at the noise, hoping that it wasn’t loud enough to draw any walkers to her.

            Standing in the doorway as her eyes adjusted to the sudden lack of light, she began scanning the room.  There was a twin-sized bed in the corner, a small table, a stove, a refrigerator, and dozens of taxidermied animals, most likely the previous owner’s trophies. Beth slowly walked in, closing and locking the door behind her.

            She walked over and laid down on the bed, planning on just resting for a few minutes, but before she knew it, she was opening her eyes to the dusky morning light streaming in through the windows.  She wasn’t scared, she wasn’t afraid, and other than the aches in her body, everything seemed alright.  She could stay here for a little while; she could make this work. She would be alone, nobody would ever have to find her, and the cabin offered a safety that she thought she would never feel again.

            Her thoughts were interrupted by the loud growling sounds coming from her stomach.  She had only had a few berries, and her body was craving more.  Walking over to the refrigerator she opened it to find it empty; not that it would have mattered, the generator that had once provided electricity for this cabin had quit working long ago, and she would have no idea how to fix it. She began opening the cabinets and almost cried when she found a box of granola bars.  She didn’t hesitate to rip the box open and grab the last remaining granola bar, eating it in a manner of seconds.  But still her body was needing more; she desperately needed water.

            She walked back outside, knowing that there had to be a water source nearby if someone had been staying here for any amount of time. It didn’t take her long to find it. It was a water pump, like the one they had back at the farm.  She cranked the rusted handle a few times, getting nothing, but after a few minutes of pumping, water started to spurt out.  She quickly grabbed the bucket sitting on the ground and filled it up. Once gain she went back inside, carrying the bucket full of water with her.  She grabbed a glass and greedily drank the water.  Her throat had been dry, but the water instantly eased it.

            She decided that it would be best to look around the cabin again to see what supplies the owner had left.  There was a half empty box of matches on the counter.  But the thing that made her the most excited and gave her hope that she could make it was the book on how to set snares. If she could figure out how to set a snare, she would be able to eat meat. 

            Feeling her eyes starting to get heavy again, she grabbed the chair and pushed it under the doorknob.  If anyone came across the cabin she wanted to make sure that they couldn’t get in. She went back over to the bed and drifted off into a deep sleep.

            She didn’t know how long she had been sleeping, but she woke up to her own screams echoing through the room.  Her heart was racing and her skin was broke out in a cold sweat. Suddenly this cabin, which had felt safe and secure, now felt dangerous.  It felt like that room they had kept her in.  She was suffocating in it.  She couldn’t stay in here.  She knew it was stupid, and she could practically hear Daryl screaming at her to suck it up and stay, but she couldn’t do it.  Every second she stayed in here was a second too long.

            She shot up out of the bed in a panic.  If she was going to leave she could at least be smart enough to bring supplies with her.  She grabbed a bag in the corner that had long since been forgotten and began throwing things into it. She grabbed the matches, a pot so she could boil water, and before she ran out of the door, she grabbed the book on how to set snares.

            She flung the chair holding the door closed to the side, making a loud clatter that rang through the room, and darted.  It was starting to get dark out.  She thought about going back and staying until it was morning, but she couldn’t bring herself to turn around.  She had to get away.

            Eventually she stopped running.  She still had no idea where she was, and she didn’t know how far she had run. No longer tired, she sat down on the ground, deciding it best to stay in one place for the night. She would start moving again in the morning.

            It didn’t take her long to realize her mistake.  The cabin had offered her safety; four walls to keep the walkers out, and four walls that would hide her from human contact. The cabin had offered her a place to sleep and a source of water.  Out here, out in the middle of nowhere, she had nothing. 

            She had been out here for another three days, and things weren’t good. She only had one match left, and while she had been able to boil some water, she didn’t have anything to put it in to save it for later.    She’d barely been sleeping, too afraid that the moment she fell asleep walkers would find her or her dreams would haunt her.

            She was studying the book on how to set snares.  She had read through it at least twice, and she was coming to the realization that there was no way she could set a snare. She didn’t have the supplies. She needed wire to make the noose, or something similar to wire.  She was thinking about what she could use when a thought hit her. She looked over at the bag she had grabbed.  It was an outdoor bag, made to last.  The stitching was strong, strong enough to keep the bag together through the elements and the wear and tare. 

            Grabbing her bag, she emptied it, the matchbox, pot, and the berries she had been picking along the way falling out of it.  She took her knife and carefully began to unstitch the materials, being careful not to cut it and ruin the only thing she could use. Once she had unstitched it and had a long, thick string, she looked at the book again.  It took her a few tries, but she eventually was able to make the overhead knot the book described.

            She found two hard sticks that branched off, like the ones shown in the pictures. She tied the noose to the stick labeled engine and stuck the stick labeled base into the ground.  Then she used the sections of the sticks that branched off to make them interlock.

            She tied the stitching to a nearby sapling.  The other end of the stitching was carefully tied to the base, causing the sapling to bend like the ones in the book.  She arranged the noose on the ground.  She stood back and looked at her snare, a smile forming on her face.  Looking at the berries on the ground from her bag, she grabbed a few and set them in the noose, hoping it would draw the attention of an animal.   Now she just had to wait.

            She picked her knife up again and grabbed the pot.  An animal wasn’t going to come around if she was here, so she might as well do something productive.  She knew that there was a stream nearby.  She had been following it the last few days, making sure to always keep it to her left.  She’d fill the pot with water and come back and check the snare before boiling the water. Maybe she could go to sleep with a full stomach tonight.

            As she walked she started to believe that maybe she could make it out here. She had a pot to boil water and she was confident in the snare she had just set.  Her next challenge would be starting a fire after she used her last match.  But right now she wasn’t going to worry about that; her mind kept returning to the thought of eating an actual meal, something that would give her energy.

            Returning to her makeshift camp for the night, she set the pot down and went to check the snare.  Her heart sank when she saw it.  The berries were gone and the snare hadn’t fired, the noose still sitting loosely on the ground. She could see the small prints of a rabbit, more evidence that an animal had in fact been there. Her snare hadn’t worked. She’d done something wrong.

            She went back over to the pot of water and grabbed the book. She looked it over again, studying the pictures and every step.  She’d done exactly what it’d said to do, but it hadn’t worked, and she had no idea why.

            If she couldn’t have a meal tonight she could at least have some water. She gathered a few twigs and dry leaves and grass and took the last match, striking it against the matchbox. The flame went out almost as quickly as it had lit.  She stared at the match in disbelief, unable to move or do anything.  She started striking against the matchbox over and over again in a futile attempt to get it to light again, even though she knew it wouldn’t.

            And suddenly any hope she had was drained out of her. Her last match was gone. Her only hope at eating something decent had failed her.  She had a pot but no way of boiling water.  She didn’t have anywhere safe to sleep.  She mentally cursed herself for not staying at the cabin.

            Sighing angrily she took the snare book and threw it as far from her as possible. She put her head in her hands, taking deep breaths to keep herself from crying.  She couldn’t fall apart, not now.  Even if everything seemed hopeless she couldn’t just give up.

            Once again she grabbed her knife and stood up.  There was no point staying here anymore.  She could at least keep moving.  As she walked, her stomach started to growl and she picked some berries, popping them into her mouth absentmindedly, attempting to fill the void.

            This is how it went for the next two days.  She was relying on berries, not having any water to drink, and her body was finally reacting to her lack of nutrition and water. She was eating another handful of berries when the wave of nausea swept over her.  She doubled over, emptying what little was left in her stomach. She couldn’t keep the berries down anymore.

            She walked for a few more hours before she was too exhausted to continue. She felt dizzy, and she knew it was because she was dehydrated.  She sat down, leaning against a tree, struggling to keep her eyes open. Eventually she lost the fight to stay awake and drifted off to sleep.

            She probably wouldn’t have woken up if it weren’t for the snapping of a branch too close for her liking.  The steady shuffling of feet over the grass and fallen leaves alerted her that the noise had come from a walker.  And the steady moans growing louder told her that it was more than one.

            She shot up into a standing position, checking to make sure that her knife was still in her hand.  She took a moment to look around and allow the dizziness to fade from her head. She could already see five walkers shuffling towards her, and that was enough to get her moving. There was no way she could take on five walkers by herself, not in the condition she was in.

            As she ran it became apparent that the five walkers weren’t alone. They started appearing on all sides of her.  She was in the middle of a herd and the only thing she had to protect herself was her knife.

            She quickly tried to dodge a walker that lunged at her, but her lack of water was making her movements sluggish and it managed to grab her arm and knock her to the ground.  The walker fell on top of her, pinning her legs beneath it as its hands grabbed at her shit, trying to pull itself up to the exposed flesh of her neck. She tried to kick it off of her, but it was too heavy and too determined to get a meal. 

            Just as it was about to bite into her neck she took her knife and stabbed it in its head with all of her strength, the blade pushing through its fragile skull and piercing the brain.  Its warm, thick blood dripped from its head and onto Beth.  Pulling the knife from the walker and forcefully pushing it away from her, she stood up and started running.  The noise from the struggle had drawn the attention of the other walkers, and they were now moving towards her.

            She was running as fast as she could, but the walkers just kept appearing. She did her best to stay out of their way, but it was unavoidable.  She didn’t know how many she had killed, but it was a lot, and her arm was burning from the constant thrusting of her blade into decaying skulls.

            She kept running, the herd slowly thinning out until it was just her and the woods.  But still she kept running. She couldn’t bring herself to stop. The herd had come in the dark, but now the sun was shining bright.  She could feel the tears rolling down her face, and her lungs were burning, struggling to get air.

            She broke through the trees.  The rough, uneven ground covered in grass and fallen branches became hard, grey pavement.  She collapsed to her knees, her body exhausted.  She couldn’t run anymore.  She couldn’t fight. She was perfectly content dying right where she was if another herd came through, knowing that her body was too exhausted to move anymore.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So you're probably thinking to yourself "Beth, why in the world would you leave that cabin?!" Yeah, I don't blame you for thinking that. But, you have absolutely no idea what happened to her. As the story goes on you will find out. She is traumatized, and being in that cabin became too much for her, and even though she knew it was a reckless decision to leave, she just had to get out of there.
> 
> Also, this chapter had a lot of up and downs...a lot of hope followed by a lot of despair. It started on a high note. She found a cabin, someplace safe, someplace she could stay. And then this safe place wasn't safe for her anymore and she left. She had matches, a pot, a knife, a bag, and a book to teach her how to set snares. She was feeling hopeful and she actually believed that she could survive. And then that snare just couldn't work and the match had to go out before she got the fire started. To top it all off she ran into a huge herd of walkers. Now she is on a road and is ready to give up. She's exhausted and her body can't take much more.
> 
> Let me just say, I am extremely excited for the next chapter. I have it all planned out and have already started to write it. I think you will like it, too!
> 
> Please leave a review and let me know what you think!


	3. Chapter 3

Ch.3

            It had been three weeks since they had gotten out of the train car and nearly four weeks since he had lost Beth.  As soon as they had escaped Terminus, Daryl was on a mission to find Beth. It was his fault that she was missing, and now it was his responsibility to find her. 

            He had retraced his steps back to the funeral home, hoping against hope that she would be there, or that there would be some sign of where she had been taken.  His mind had been racing when he had first ran from the house and saw the car screeching away, taking Beth with it, but now he had had time to clear his thoughts, to think things through.  He followed the path of the car to the fork in the road, and again he discovered that he was lost. There was no sign anywhere, no tracks that he could follow.  He wanted to collapse to the ground again, but he couldn’t give up.  He decided to lead the group down the road he hadn’t been down.

            And that’s how they were where they were now, still following the road. Any house or building they came upon they would search, looking for any sign of Beth; a lock of her blond hair, a boot print, a piece of clothing, a drop of blood.  But they never found anything, and it had been days since they had last come across a building to search; the woods now lined the road.

            He had thought of every possible situation that Beth could be in, and each one was worse than the last.  This world caused some people to lose their humanity, and there was no telling what they were capable of.  Every morning he sent a prayer up to a god he wasn’t sure he believed in, and every night he did the same.  He prayed that he would find Beth.  He prayed that she wasn’t hurt, and that he would get to her before anything happened to her. He also prayed that if he was too late, that if whoever had taken her had hurt her in any way, that if she was suffering, that God would end her pain, that he would let her be at peace. He hated himself for asking for that, but he didn’t want Beth to suffer.

            They were taking a break.  Everyone was tired, so they stopped in the middle of the road.  Daryl sat down, setting his crossbow beside him. Maggie took a seat next to him. She hadn’t left his side since he had told her about Beth.  She had been angry with him, furious even, but she had forgiven him.  She told him that it wasn’t his fault, that there was nothing he could do.  But he knew that she was wrong. It was all his fault. He had promised her that he would get her back, that she would see her sister again, and he was determined to keep that promise.

            Most everyone was quiet.  As the days dragged on, their hopes in finding Beth had dwindled.  He could see it in their faces, in the looks they gave him, but they never said anything.  Abraham was rambling on about needing to get Eugene to Washington, D.C. At first he hadn’t protested looking for Beth; in fact he had been a willing participant in the search for her. He had said that he owed them for getting Rosita, Eugene, and him out of Terminus.  Now he was getting anxious.  He wanted to get a move on, and he was starting to doubt that Beth was still alive.  Daryl overheard him telling Rick that he was only going to stay a few more days, and if they didn’t find the girl he was leaving.

            Daryl was broken from his thoughts when he heard a rustling in the woods. Everyone turned to where the noise was coming from.  On instinct, Daryl stood, picking up his crossbow and aiming it in the direction of the noise. His finger was on the trigger, about to pull it to kill the approaching walker, but he hesitated when it came out of the woods.

            The figure fell to its knees, hitting the ground hard, using it’s arms to hold itself up.  Daryl dropped his crossbow, running as fast as he could to the figure.  It wasn’t a walker, it was a girl, it was Beth. He dropped to his knees in front of her. She was barely recognizable. Every inch of her skin was covered in dirt and blood, the ends of her hair stained red.  The only visible skin was where the tears were falling from her eyes. Her shirt was ripped and tattered, barely staying on her shoulders, and her jeans were loosely clinging to her jutting hipbones, the button missing.

            She was clutching a knife in her hand, the same knife he had given to her after the prison, her knuckles white.  Daryl raised his hand to her chin, gently tilting her face to look at him. Her eyes were blank and unfocused; she wasn’t really seeing him.  Carefully he removed the knife from her hand and scooped her up, carrying her over to the rest of the group, sitting down with her in his lap.

            “Someone warm up water and bring me a rag,” he yelled, never taking his eyes off of Beth.

            He barely registered Maggie rushing over to him and kneeling down beside him. Her hand reached out to brush the hair out of Beth’s face, but she immediately stopped her movements when she saw Beth flinch away from her touch, trying to push herself as close to Daryl as possible. Daryl looked at Maggie and he saw the worry written all over her face.

            Looking back down at Beth, he studied her face.  Her eyes were still blank and she was looking straight ahead. A steady stream of tears was rolling down her face, but she wasn’t making a sound or moving.

            Daryl looked around at the rest of the group.  Most of them were staring in disbelief, which only confirmed his suspicions that most of them thought Beth was dead. Carol was building a fire and starting to warm up a pot of water.  The group had found Carol, Tyreese, and Judith two days after they had made it out of Terminus.  They had vaguely told them what had happened to Lizzie and Mika, and nobody questioned the actions they took to protect Judith.  Rick welcomed Carol back into the group, never mentioning that she had been the one to kill Karen and David.  The past was the past. They needed to move on and forget what had happened.

            As soon as Carol brought the pot of warm water over to Daryl and handed him a rag he began to clean Beth as best he could.  He hadn’t noticed at first; perhaps he had been too caught up in the moment, maybe his emotions had been clouding his thoughts and had caused his mind to overlook the blood coating Beth’s skin.  Beth wasn’t covered in just walker blood, but also human blood. In fact, it was mostly human blood that stained her clothes and had congealed on her skin.

            Every wipe of the cloth over her skin revealed a new horror. Bruises littered her body. Some of them were in the shape of a hand, the fingers wrapping around her arms, leaving marks behind from where she had been grabbed too hard.  He was hoping that it was a walker’s hand that had left those marks.  She had too many cuts and scrapes to count, but none of them would have been cause for the amount of blood on her. 

            He moved from cleaning her arms to cleaning her face. He delicately wiped the blood and dirt from her cheeks, erasing the trails her tears had left. He noticed that she had a busted lip that was almost done healing.  Her right eye had a light bruise just underneath it.

            When he was finally done cleaning her, he placed the rag back into the water that was now a deep shade of dirty red.  He looked at her skin and was pleased that he had been able to get most of the blood and dirt off of her, but the water had gotten so dirty so fast that it was impossible to completely clean her.

            Looking at her shirt again, Daryl removed his angel wing vest. He unbuttoned the flannel shirt he had been wearing since before they had found the funeral home. It was dirty, but it was better than the shirt she had on.  He carefully put in on her, leaving her ratted yellow polo underneath it. She was swimming in the new shirt, but it covered her.

            He was wracking his brain for what to do next.  His thoughts were going a million miles an hour, and he was having a hard time organizing them.  He had cleaned her, but what next?  Food. She must be hungry. He reached over to his bag that was sitting beside him and grabbed a granola bar out of it.  He opened it and handed it to her.  When she didn’t take it he set it on her stomach, figuring she’d eat when she got hungry.

            “I can’t keep anything down,” she said just above a whisper, causing Daryl to strain his ears to hear her.

            Daryl nodded slowly and reached back into his bag.  He pulled out his bottle of water.  If she couldn’t eat, maybe she could still keep down a little water. He unscrewed the cap and lifted the bottle to her lips.  He slowly titled it back. He could tell that she was thirsty. She brought a weak hand to the bottle and tried to tip it back more, but Daryl kept the bottle firmly in place pressed against her lips.  He didn’t want her to drink it too fast and make herself sick.

            “Take it slow,” he said calmly.  “Just take small sips.”

            When she started to cough he took the bottle back and set it aside. They could try again later. He looked over at Maggie again, whose watery eyes were glued to her younger sister.  She hadn’t said a word, and he assumed she was still in shock.

            Bob made his way over to them and kneeled down in front of him and Beth. He had the most medical experience in the group, and Daryl trusted him with Beth and her injuries. He reached a hand out to her, but Beth flinched away from him just as she had with Maggie.

            “Beth, it’s me; it’s Bob,” he said softly.  “I’m not going to hurt you.  I promise. I just need to look at your injuries, okay? We need to get them cleaned, make sure they aren’t too serious.”

            Beth didn’t say anything, but when Bob gently grabbed her left arm she didn’t pull it back.  Daryl watched as Bob looked at her arm, inspecting every inch of it.  He saw the concern on his face when he looked at her raw and bloodied wrist; her right wrist looked the same way.  Daryl wasn’t stupid; he knew what they were.  They were ligature marks.  Her wrists had been tied tightly; she had been restrained.

            Bob looked over at the first aid kit he had brought with him and picked up an alcohol swab.  Daryl held onto Beth a little tighter, knowing that this was going to hurt her. Bob began to methodically clean the wound, holding tight to Beth’s arm when she tensed and made to move it away from him.  Tears began to fall from her eyes again, but she still didn’t say anything.  When Bob had finished cleaning her wrist, he grabbed the roll of gauze and began to wrap her wrist.  He moved on to her right wrist and did the same, wordlessly cleaning and bandaging it, completely focused on his task.

            After Bob had checked Beth over, cleaning all of her cuts and scrapes that weren’t hiding beneath clothing, he stood up.  He looked down at Beth sadly and walked away.

            Daryl returned his attention to Beth.  Her eyelids were heavy, slowly drooping closed.  She was struggling to stay awake, but she was doing her best to fight sleep.

            “Sleep,” he said to her. 

            Beth ignored him and continued her battle with her exhaustion.

            “You can sleep now.  You’re safe. Nothing can hurt you now. I have you, and I’m not going to let anything happen to you.  You’re safe. Sleep.”

            Beth slowly nodded and her eyes almost immediately closed. He watched as her chest slowly rose and fell, her breathing regulating.  Her face relaxed and the tension in her body eased.  Daryl wiped at his face, wiping away a single tear that had managed to escape.  He had found her; or rather she had found him. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know that a lot of you have been waiting for this chapter, waiting for the Beth and Daryl reunion. And I know that it may not be what you were expecting. There was know big hug and neither of them confessed their love for the other. All I can say is all well.
> 
> This chapter finally gave us a time line. It has been four weeks since Daryl and Beth were at the funeral home and it got overrun. That's a long time to be separated from the group. If you do the math, Beth has been on her own for a few days, about a week. We know what happened during that week she was on her own, but the other three weeks are still a complete mystery.
> 
> Also, Daryl never gave up looking for her. One of my favorite parts of this chapter is when it talks about Daryl praying. He desperately wanted to find her, and he was praying that he would. But he was also being realistic about things. He knows what kind of people the world they live in creates, and he knew that Beth could be suffering. So he prays that if she is suffering that God ends her pain...he prays that she dies. I think that's a very powerful thing for him to do. Yes, it's very sad, and some may think it's a little weird. But to me, I kind of see it as Daryl showing how much he cares for Beth, wether that be romantically or just as really really close friends.
> 
> I'm already working on the next chapter, and so far it is from Daryl's POV. So expect an update relatively soon.
> 
> Please leave a review and tell me what you think.


	4. Chapter 4

Ch.4

            “We can’t stay here.  We have to find someplace to stay for a little while,” Daryl said, glancing over at Beth.

            Maggie had laid out a blanket just after Beth had fallen asleep, and Daryl had laid her on it after holding her for a few more hours. Maggie had stayed by her side the whole time, but she had gotten up when the group had begun discussing what they were going to do now.  They had found Beth, but nobody was sure what kind of state she was in or how weak she was.

            “We need someplace that we can stay just until she’s better,” Maggie said. “After that we can head to Washington, I guess.”

            Rick nodded and looked at Abraham.  “I’m not saying that we’re giving up going to D.C.  We’ll still go.  But that girl, Beth, we found her, and now we have to do whatever it takes to make her better.  I owe that to her…I owe that to Maggie…I owe that to her father,” he said quietly but forcefully.

            Abraham looked at him for a moment.  “Fine. Rosita, Eugene, and I will stay with you.  We’ll do whatever needs to be done to keep everyone safe and get the girl healed.  But once she’s up and moving again and able to travel, we’re going to Washington.”

            Rosita placed a hand on Abraham’s shoulder and smiled weakly. “Thank you,” she said.

            Daryl wasn’t sure why, and he really didn’t understand it, but Rosita had wanted to find Beth just as badly as everyone else in the group who had known Beth from the prison.  When Abraham had stated that they needed to keep moving, that they couldn’t waste anymore time, Rosita had begun arguing with him.  She wanted to stay with the group and do whatever she could to help Beth and the others. For that Daryl was thankful.

            Once it was decided that everyone was staying and that they would try to find someplace to stay, they began the discussion on Beth.

            “She didn’t say much, but she told me that she can’t keep any food down,” Daryl offered.

            “She probably hasn’t eaten in days.  She’s severely dehydrated.  We need to start slow.  She can’t eat any solid foods; they’ll be too much for her, she won’t be able to keep them down. We need to find soups and broths. We’ll keep her on that for a little while and gradually move her into solid foods,” Bob said.

            “I don’t think we have any soups or broths,” Sasha said. “I think we only have a few cans of beans and the rest is fruit and vegetables.”

            “Then we’ll have to find some,” Rick said.  “We can find a small town or something, hole up in a building there until she’s better.  If we find a town there has to be a grocery store.  We’ll get her what she needs.”

            Everyone remained silent for a moment, nobody wanting to be the one to bring up the inevitable.  They all had seen what Beth looked like before Daryl had cleaned her.  There was no way to overlook the bandages on her wrists or the bruises and cuts so clearly visible against her pale skin. Nobody knew what happened to her, Beth hadn’t said anything, they could only speculate.

            “That blood that was on her, that’s on her clothes and dried in her hair, it’s not hers,” Daryl said.

            “Walker blood?” Maggie asked.

            Daryl shook his head.  “Some of it, but most of it was human blood.”

            Maggie nodded solemnly, taking in a deep breath.

            “And her wrists…those are ligature marks,” Bob said sadly. “They’re pretty bad, too. There are some deep cuts, and her wrists are raw and bloody.  We’re going to have to keep an eye on them, keep cleaning them so they don’t get infected.”

            They all knew what ligature marks meant.  The air around them suddenly felt ten times heavier.

            “She was held against her will,” Maggie said quietly, her voice shaking as she tried to hold back tears.

            Glenn wrapped an arm around her, pulling her in close. “Hey, don’t let your mind go there. We don’t know what happened yet. Don’t go around speculating things. Alright?”

            Maggie nodded.

            “We have her back now.  We just need to be there for her,” Glenn said softly into Maggie’s ear.

            There was another moment of silence.  Everyone just seemed to stare into nothingness.

            Michonne was the one to break the silence.  “We need to find her new clothes.  Daryl’s shirt will do for now, but she’s going to need her own shirt. And her jeans…they’re covered in blood and missing the button.”

            Carol looked over at Michonne.  “When we find someplace to stay I can go looking for clothes.  I know her sizes from doing laundry.”

            “I can go with you,” Michonne said. 

            Carol nodded slowly, looking at the ground.  “Thank you.”

            Daryl knew that Carol was taking this hard.  After the farm Carol and Beth had grown close. Carol became the mother figure that Beth no longer had, and Carol happily filled that role for her, looking after Beth as she would her own daughter.  Their time at the prison had only strengthened their relationship.

            “We should get going soon,” Abraham said, looking up at the sky.   “We want to find someplace before it’s dark, and the way it’s been these past few days the nearest town could be miles away.”

            “But she’s sleeping,” Maggie said quietly.  “Shouldn’t we let her sleep?  She needs to sleep.”

            “She needs to be someplace safe.  She can sleep when we get there,” Abraham said.

            Maggie opened her mouth to say something, but Daryl cut her off.

            “I can carry her,” he said, glancing over at Beth again. “I’ll carry her. That way she can still sleep.”

            “Are you sure?” Rick asked.  “We could be walking for a while.  We don’t know when we’ll come across another town.”

            “I said I’m carrying her,” Daryl said defensively.

            Rick nodded and clapped a hand on his shoulder, offering him a weak smile.

            Everyone began packing up their things.  There wasn’t much to pack up so it didn’t take long.  Daryl went over to Beth.  She was sleeping, the slow rise and fall of her chest was evidence of that. He reached down and gently scooped her into his arms, careful not to wake her.  Her head lulled to rest against his chest.

            He hadn’t noticed it when he had first carried her back to camp, but she had lost weight.  She had to have. He remembered carrying her when she hurt her ankle.  He remembered making a comment about her being heavier than she looked.  He was joking a little when he had said that. But now, carrying Beth in his arms, he knew that she was lighter.  He could feel the bones under her skin.

            Daryl kept looking at her as they walked.  He was studying her.  Once again his mind was being filled with all of the scenarios she could have been in. He was trying to make sense of all of the blood.  He was trying to figure out how long she had been out there by herself. 

            “We need shampoo,” he said quietly, not even sure if anyone could hear him.

            “Um, I think-I think I may have some in my bag.  I-I don’t really know, though,” Maggie said.

            He hadn’t even noticed that she was walking beside him. He looked over at her. She was doing the same thing he had been doing.  She was studying her. She wanted to know what had happened. He could only imagine the scenarios that were going through her head.

            “You okay?” he asked quietly.

            Maggie shook her head.  “I don’t know. I’m happy that she’s back…but look at her, Daryl.  What happened to her?”

            Daryl nodded slowly, looking back at Beth.  “We don’t know yet, Maggie.  We just have to wait.  It might not be bad…” he said, his voice trailing off.

            He wanted to believe himself.  He wanted to believe that nothing bad had happened to her.  But the more he thought about it, the worse it became.   Eventually his thoughts came to an abrupt halt when Rick suddenly stopped, pointing ahead of them.

            “There’s a town,” he said.  “It doesn’t look big…only a few buildings.  We chose one and clear it and settle down for the night.”

            The group began to walk faster, the sun starting to set. They needed to clear a building before it was dark.   They chose the first building they saw. It wasn’t big. It was only two stories, brick, and didn’t have many windows.  The few windows that it did have weren’t broken, which was a good sign.

            “Daryl, Maggie, stay out here with Beth.  The rest of us will clear it and come back out to get you,” Glenn said before giving Maggie a quick kiss.  “Everything’s going to be alright,” he whispered into Maggie’s ear.

            Daryl sighed and leaned against the building, still holding onto Beth tightly, watching as the rest of the group went inside.  It didn’t take long before they came back out, dragging the rotting bodies of two walkers with them.

            Carol looked at him.  “It’s clear. I laid down a few blankets for her on the top floor.”

            Daryl nodded and walked inside.  It was dark, but he vaguely remembered Rosita grabbing a few candles in one of the houses they had raided looking for Beth.  He slowly made his way up the stairs to the second floor. It was one big open room, no walls separating it.  He spotted the mound of blankets Carol had assembled for Beth and carefully set her down.

            Michonne came up the stairs, the rest of the group following behind her. “Carol and I are gonna go look for some clothes for her.  We’ll try to find some food, too.  Sasha checked…we have one can of chicken broth,” Michonne said quietly.

            Daryl sat down a few feet away from Beth.  Everyone started to settle into what would be their new home until they got back on the road.  As he suspected, Rosita grabbed a few candles from her bag, lighting them and placing them throughout the room.

            “You should get some sleep,” Rosita said when she sat a candle near him. “You’ve been carrying her all day. You have to be exhausted.”

            Daryl grunted in response and Rosita walked away.  He wasn’t going to sleep until Beth woke up and he had a chance to talk to her.  He needed to know that she was okay, that she would get better.

            He couldn’t take his eyes off of her.  He was afraid that the moment he looked away she would disappear. But as he watched her he saw the way her face changed.  It went from being relaxed to tensing, and soon enough a strangled scream was escaping her mouth, echoing throughout the room.

            He was confused at first, not knowing what was going on. When it finally clicked in his head that she was having a nightmare he rushed to her side, Maggie reaching her at the same time.  He gently shook her shoulders.

            “Beth. Beth, wake up,” he said, trying to keep his voice calm.

            Her eyes popped open and he breathed a sigh of relief. He helped her sit up and lean back against the wall.  Her breathing was ragged and she placed her head in her hands, trying to calm herself.

            “It was just a dream,” she mumbled.  “Just a dream.”

            “Are you alright?” Maggie asked worriedly.

            “I’m fine,” Beth whispered weakly, not looking up.

            “I’m going to get you something to eat, okay?  Daryl will stay with you.”

            Beth gave a barely noticeable nod and Maggie left to go get Beth the can of broth they had.  Daryl continued looking at Beth, watching as her breathing slowly returned to normal. He wanted to say something, but every time he opened his mouth no words came out.  He was never good with words, but he had absolutely no idea what to say to her.

            When Beth finally looked up, she avoided making eye contact with anyone. Her eyes were open, but she wasn’t actually looking at anything.  She still had dark circles under her eyes.

            He saw her look down at her wrists, frowning slightly when she noticed the bandages.  Then her hands went to the knife sheath resting against her thigh.  Her eyes widened when her knife wasn’t there. She was starting to panic. Daryl quickly grabbed his bag and rummaged through it, finding her knife.

            “Here, here,” he said calmly, handing her knife to her. “I put it in my bag, It’s right here.”

            Beth’s shaky hand reached out and took it from him, clutching it as tightly as she was when he had first seen her.  She immediately calmed down, but her body was still stiff, rigid.

            He was still thinking of what to say to her, and before he even realized it, words were coming out of his mouth.  “You were right.  I did miss you so bad when you were gone, Beth Greene.”

            Beth finally looked up at him, her eyes meeting his and actually seeing him, not just looking through him.  “You were right, too,” she said, her voice raw, probably from lack of water.

            “About what?” He asked, not knowing what she was talking about.

            “The good ones don’t survive.”

            Daryl looked down.  He remembered telling her that.  It was when they were at the cemetery.  _“I don’t think the good ones survive anymore.”_ He’d told her that and she had swore to him that there were still good people.  He was skeptical at first, but she had changed his mind. And now he knew that she what she was saying was wrong.  The good ones do survive. She was here, and she was good, and she had survived.

            He leaned back against the wall next to her.  There were so many things that he wanted to ask, but he didn’t know where to start.  He didn’t want to say something wrong.  Would she even want to talk about what had happened?  Maybe she would be too tired to talk.  After a few minutes of tense silence he finally spoke.

            “What happened to yah Beth?” Daryl asked, looking at her carefully.

            Beth looked him directly in the eye, and spoke with a voice that was eerily calm. “I took care of myself.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So there's chapter 4. They've found someplace to stay and now they can focus on Beth. My favorite part of this chapter is the ending. Daryl tells Beth that he missed her and Beth tells Daryl that he was right when he said that the good ones don't survive anymore, but she never went into any explanation. All she tells him is that she took care of herself.
> 
> The next update probably won't before for another two weeks or so...my life got really hectic really quick, but I am going to do my best to update as soon as possible.
> 
> Please review and tell me what you think!


	5. Chapter 5

Ch.5

            They hadn’t left her alone.  Nobody was leaving her alone.  And all that she wanted was to be alone.  Maggie was constantly by her side, trying to coerce her to eat more broth, drink more water.  When Maggie wasn’t there, Daryl would take her place.  He was quiet and thankfully didn’t say much.  But his eyes, they never left her.  Even when she wasn’t looking at him she could feel them boring into her.

            Right now she had both of them.  Maggie was sitting to her left, a bottle of water in her hands that she had been trying to get Beth to drink for the last hour.  And Daryl was on her right, leaning heavily against the wall, his eyes shifting between Maggie and Beth.  Beth hadn’t said a word.

            “Mind if you give Beth and I a little time,” Bob asked, slowly approaching the three with a first aid kit in his hands.

            “Uh, yeah, sure,” Maggie said hesitantly.

            “It will only take a few minutes,” Bob said reassuringly.

            Beth heard Maggie take a deep, shaky breath before leaning over and placing a gentle kiss on the top of Beth’s head.  “I’ll be back as soon as Bob is done,” she said, standing up and looking at Daryl. “Come on.”

            Beth sighed and watched Maggie and Daryl walk to the other side of the room, hoping that they wouldn’t come back and would just leave her alone. Beth looked away from them when she realized that their eyes were still glued to her.

            “How are you feeling?” Bob asked gently, kneeling down in front of her.

            Beth shrugged her shoulders.  “Fine,” she said gruffly, her voice still raspy from her lack of water.

            “Can I clean your wrists?” he asked quietly, extending a hand and carefully grabbing onto one of her hands before she even had time to answer him.

            Beth jumped a little and tried to pull her hand away before she even realized what she was doing.  Bob’s hand tightened its grip on her, not letting her go.  But his hands were soft, they weren’t harsh like her mind and body had been expecting, and Beth relaxed a little when she remembered who it was that was touching her.

            “I’m not gonna hurt you Beth,” he said, sensing her discomfort. “I just need to get these cleaned so they don’t get infected.  Okay?”

            Beth nodded, closing her eyes in an attempt to calm herself.

            “Maggie said that you haven’t been drinking much water?”

            “Not thirsty,” she said as Bob began to take off the bandage on her right wrist.

            “You need to drink it, Beth.  You’re dehydrated.  You’ll feel better.”

            “Maybe later.”

            Bob sighed, but Beth ignored it.

            “Have you slept anymore since you woke up?” he asked, starting to clean her wrist.

            “No,” Beth answered through clenched teeth, her wrist throbbing in pain.

            “You should try to get some more rest when we finish up here.”

            “Alright.”

            Bob quickly finished cleaning her right wrist.  He carefully took her left hand and unwound the bandage from her wrist.  Beth kept her eyes closed as Bob turned her wrist from side to side, inspecting the wound.

            “You okay?” he asked as he began to clean her wrist.

            “Yeah.”

            The truth was, she wasn’t okay.  She didn’t want to look at her wrists.  She hadn’t looked at them since she had escaped.  She knew they were bad, she could tell by the way they burned when he gently swiped the alcohol swab over them.  She could tell they were bad by the noises Bob was making as he cleaned them.  She didn’t want to see them; they would only remind her of things she wanted to forget.

            After a few more minutes Beth felt as Bob finished re-bandaging her wrist. But even when he let her hand go he didn’t leave her.  Beth opened her eyes and looked at him for a moment before looking away.

            “Are there any other injuries you want me to look at?”

            “No,” Beth answered curtly.

            The truth was, there were other injuries, but she wouldn’t let anybody see them.  They knew about her wrists, and the bruises and cuts that were on her arms and legs and face. They didn’t know about the injuries hidden beneath her clothes, the ones she wouldn’t let any of them see.

            “Carol and Michonne should be back soon with new clothes for you.”

            “Okay.”

            Soon after Beth had woken up from her nightmare, Maggie had convinced Beth to take off her pants.  They were covered in blood and dirt, and the button was missing.  Maggie had promised Beth that Carol and Michonne would find her a new pair of jeans, so Beth had agreed and had stripped herself of the bloodied garment, leaving her only in Daryl’s flannel button down, which thankfully came to her knees. 

            “Drink some water,” Bob said, standing back up and looking down at Beth sadly. “And if you decide that you have anything else you need me to look at, just let me know, okay? I won’t tell anybody if you don’t want me to…”

            Beth nodded, refusing to look at Bob. 

            “Aren’t you going to go?” Beth asked when she noticed that Bob was still standing in front of her, looking at her.

            “Drink some water,” Bob said again, turning and walking away.

            Beth let out a sigh of relief, leaning her head back against the wall and closing her eyes.  She was alone. For the first time since she had stumbled upon the others she was alone.  She felt like she could finally relax a little.  But her peace didn’t last long, because a few minutes later both Maggie and Daryl were back, sitting on either side of her.

            “Drink,” Maggie said, forcing a bottle of water into her hands.

            Beth looked at Maggie and instantly knew that Maggie wasn’t going to stop nagging her until she listened to her and actually drank the water. Beth reluctantly opened the bottle and started to drink.  The burning in her throat instantly subsided as the warm water washed through her parched mouth.  Beth hadn’t even realized how thirsty she was until she noticed that the bottle was empty.

            Maggie laughed softly.  “See…you need to keep drinking…get fluids into you again.”

            Beth smiled weakly.

            “Daryl?” Maggie asked, looking past Beth.  “Do you think you could give Beth and I some time alone?”

            “Yeah,” Daryl said, hesitantly standing up.  “Y-yeah…of course,” he said, slowly walking away.

            Maggie looked at Beth, not saying anything for a few moments.

            “What?” Beth groaned, knowing where this conversation was going to go, but desperately hoping that she was wrong.

            “You wanna talk about anything?”

            “No.”

            “You wanna tell me what happened?” Maggie asked quietly.

            “Nothing happened.”

            “Beth…I saw your wrists.  I saw the cuts and bruises and scrapes.  The blood…” Maggie said quietly, reaching out and gently grabbing Beth’s hand.

            “Nothing happened, Maggie,” Beth said, harshly pulling her hand away from Maggie.

            “I know that’s not true, Beth.  Something happened to you.  You were gone for weeks.  What happened?”

            Just as Beth opened her mouth to say something, Carol and Michonne appeared at the top of the stairs.  Carol slowly made her way over to Beth, taking her bag off of her shoulder as she sat down beside her.

            “We got you some clothes, sweetie,” Carol said softly, pulling out a pair of jeans and a new shirt.  “I think they’ll fit…they may be a little big since you’ve lost some weight, but they should do the trick.”

            “Thanks,” Beth said quietly, taking the clothes from Carol. “Thank you…”

            “We got some broths and soups, too.  I’ll go warm you one up.”

            “Thank you, Carol, so much,” Maggie said warmly, looking at Carol.

            Carol smiled weakly.  “I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

            Maggie turned towards Beth again, taking the stack of clothing from her. “Here.  I’ll help you change.”

            “I got it,” Beth said, taking the pile back from her.

            “Take it easy,” Maggie said, quickly putting her hands up to steady Beth as she stood.  “You’re still weak.”

            “I’m fine.”

            Maggie sighed.

            Beth quickly put the pair of jeans on, but didn’t change into the shirt.

            “Aren’t you going to change into the shirt they brought you?”

            “No,” Beth said, sitting back down.

            The truth was, she didn’t want to change out of Daryl’s shirt. It smelled of a mixture of sweat, and woods, and cigarette smoke.  It smelled like him.  And to Beth, that was comforting.  But more importantly, the shirt was big and baggy.  It covered her arms, hid the bruises and cuts.  The shirt that Michonne and Carol had brought back for her was short sleeved; it would show everything she was trying to hide, and she knew that everyone would stare.

            “The jeans fit!” Carol said excitedly, walking over to Beth, holding a can of soup in her hands.  “Why don’t you sit back down so you can eat?”

            Beth nodded and slowly sat back down, sliding down the wall until her butt hit the pile of blankets she had been using as a bed.

            Carol handed Beth the can of soup, quickly wrapping a rag around the can. “Be careful, it’s hot.”

            Beth started to eat the soup, looking around the room as she ate, her eyes stopping to rest on Daryl for a moment before looking away.

            “So how are you feeling?” Carol asked.

            “Bob already asked.  Ask him if you wanna know,” Beth said quietly.

            Carol nodded, pursing her lips slightly, watching Beth eat.

            Beth kept looking straight ahead, trying to ignore Carol and Maggie’s staring.

            “You seem pretty beat up.  Wanna talk about what happened?”

            “No.”

            “Beth, sweetie, you don’t have to be ashamed about whatever happened. Nobody here is going to judge you. You can talk about it.”

            “There’s nothing to talk about because nothing happened,” Beth said harshly.

            “Alright,” Carol said softly.  “Maybe later…”

            Beth ignored Carol, still looking around the room as she ate the soup. Her eyes landed on an unfamiliar face that she hadn’t noticed before.  Looking around the room again she noticed that there were four faces she didn’t recognize.  She had never seen them before, so they weren’t from the prison.  She didn’t know these people, and that made her nervous.

            “Wh-who are they?” Beth asked quietly, setting the can of soup down.

            “Who?’ Maggie asked, looking up.  “Oh, them?  I guess you haven’t met them yet.  Hey, come over here,” Maggie called out to the unfamiliar people.

            “Who are they?” Beth asked worriedly.

            “We met them after the prison.  They’re safe.  They won’t hurt us.”

            Beth cautiously watched the four people walk over to them, pushing herself as far against the wall as she could when they sat down in front of her.

            “Beth, this is Eugene,” Maggie said, pointing towards the heavyset man with a mullet.  “He was with Abraham and Rosita,” she said, pointing to a redheaded man with a mustache and a pretty young woman with dark hair. 

            Beth looked at the three and then looked down when all of them stared at her.

            “They’re trying to get to Washington, D.C.  Eugene know what started this all…he knows how to stop it.”

            Beth glanced back up at the man and nodded once.

            Maggie pointed to another young woman with short, dark hair. “And this here is Tara. She was with Glenn and the others when we found them.”

            Beth nodded again.

            “They all wanted to help find you.  Abraham postponed going to Washington so that they could help look for you,” Maggie said softly. 

            Rosita looked at Beth, smiling softly.  “Daryl was pretty determined to find you.  He wasn’t gonna give up.  I figured if someone was that angsty to find someone else, the person must be worth looking for.”   

            Beth looked at Rosita and then to Daryl, who was still standing on the other side of the room.

            “But now that we found you, we’re going to heading off to Washington again. All of us,” Abraham demanded.

            “Give the girl some time to rest and recover,” Rosita said, looking over at Abraham.  “Washington will still be there, even if we stay here for a little while.  We’ll head out soon enough.  Just let her rest.”

            “The deal was to start moving again when we got her back.”    

            “The deal was to start moving again when Beth is ready to travel,” Rosita said matter-of-factly.

            “Fine,” Abraham sighed.

            Rosita smiled and looked back at Beth.  “So Beth, you just rest as much as you need to.  We’re in no rush.  Take your time.”

            Beth nodded again, just wanting the four of them to go. It was bad enough having Maggie by her side every second, even worse when Daryl was there, too. And now she had Carol. And she knew that they were all waiting for her to talk, for her to say something about what had happened. Maggie and Carol were obvious about it. They would just keep asking her questions, trying to pry it out of her.  Daryl, on-the-other-hand, was willing to wait until she let something slip.

            She knew that Maggie was waiting for her to break.  She could see it in her eyes; hear it in the tone of voice she used when she talked to Beth.  Maggie thought she was fragile, and by the looks on everyone else’s faces, they all were thinking the same thing. 

            Beth let out a sigh of relief when the four new people stood up and walked away.  Her body relaxed a little, and she leaned her head against the wall, closing her eyes.

            “Why don’t you get some sleep, Beth?  You look exhausted…”

            Before Beth could even respond, she had fallen asleep. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So this chapter was a Beth chapter, but it had a lot of other characters in it. Beth is sort of feeling constricted right now. Nobody is leaving her alone. Everyone is worried about her. And, Beth got to meet Eugene, Abraham, Rosita, and Tara! 
> 
> Next chapter will be from Daryl's POV.
> 
> Please leave a review and tell me what you think!


	6. Chapter 6

Ch.6

            She was quiet.  She had barely said anything to anyone since they had found her.  And when she did speak, it was short.  It wasn’t like it was at the prison, where she would be engaged and try to drag the conversation out as long as possible and with ease, always enjoying the company of others.  No, she wasn’t like that now.  She stayed on her makeshift bed, avoiding making eye contact with anyone, giving one-word responses when necessary.

            And Daryl kept his eyes on her.  He had realized that she needed space.  Maggie was practically on top of her every moment of every day, and he knew that Beth was growing aggravated.  He could sense that she wanted to be left alone, and he understood that feeling. He understood what it felt like when all you wanted was to be left alone, but nobody would let you be alone. So he did his part and kept his distance.  But his eyes, they never left her. 

            Daryl had watched as she slowly regained her strength. She had moved from eating broth to eating solid foods; granola bars, fruits, beans, and whatever else they could find.  He had considered going hunting, he knew that they needed meat, but he wasn’t willing to leave the building, it meant that he wouldn’t be able to see her.

            She had been sleeping, but the dark shadows under her eyes were still there. They stuck out on her pale skin just like her bruises did.  And her sleep was restless.  Most nights she would wake with a gasp, or a strangled scream.  He knew that she was having nightmares about whatever she had been through.

            And every morning Daryl would watch from across the room as Bob would change the bandages on her wrists, cleaning the wounds that had been left behind by whatever was used to keep her restrained.  And every time she would flinch away from him. He could hear the soft voice of Bob trying to talk to her, but her mouth never moved, she never answered him. Her eyes were downcast, looking away from him.  Her body would relax in the brief moment of solitude she had when Bob left, in the short span of time before Maggie scurried back to her side.

            But right now her body was rigid, tense.  She was sitting on the far end of the blanket, and Daryl knew why. Maggie was there, as usual. It didn’t look like she was saying anything, but he knew that either she already had, or that she would start talking soon. 

            He understood Maggie’s desire to know what happened to Beth. Hell, he wanted to force it out of her, too.  But Beth’s lips were sealed; she wasn’t going to talk.  She was the only one who knew what happened to her, and by the looks of it, it was going to stay that way.  The thought of never knowing what happened scared him to death.

            Daryl sighed as he continued to watch Maggie and Beth. He had been right; Maggie was going to start talking.  She kept opening and closing her mouth, as if trying to figure out what to say. She was going to begin asking Beth questions that he knew Beth wouldn’t answer.  He also knew that it was going to irritate Beth, make her angry, and worst of all, he knew that the questions would hurt her.  He had seen it in her eyes.  As soon as anyone said anything about her disappearance, about the search for her, about finding her, her eyes became distant, glossed over with sadness, as if any life had been sucked out of her. 

            “Maggie, can I talk to you?” Daryl called from across the room.

            Maggie immediately looked over to him. 

            “Come here.  I need to talk to you,” he said softly, not wanting to sound too demanding,

            Maggie glanced at Beth and then back to Daryl.  She nodded as she stood up and slowly crossed the room. She hesitated before sitting down next to him, her eyes immediately falling to look at Beth.

            “We need to talk.”

            “About what?”

            “You.”

            That immediately caught Maggie’s attention, and her eyes shifted from Beth to Daryl, her head turning slightly.

            “Me?” she asked confusedly.

            “Yeah, you.”

            “What about me?”

            “You need to give Beth some space.”

            “What?”

            “You need to give her space.”         

            “No I don’t.”

            “Yes, you do.  You’ve been hanging over her, and she doesn’t like it.”

            “I’m not leaving her alone.”

            “She’s not alone, Maggie.”

            Maggie didn’t say anything.

            “She just needs some time to herself.  Everyone’s been hanging over her, waiting for her to say something, but you can tell it makes her uncomfortable.  She just needs some space, a little time to be alone.”

            “But I don’t want to leave her alone…”

            “I know you don’t.  I don’t want her to be alone, either.  But I think that this is all a little overwhelming for her.  I’m not saying that you should just leave her alone all of the time. I just think it’d be a good idea to give her a few hours to herself.  It’s not like you won’t be able to see her…we’re all in one big room.”

            Maggie looked back over at Beth, not saying anything.  Daryl followed her gaze.  Beth was leaning against the wall, her head tilted down slightly. Her fingers were twirling a loose string on Daryl’s flannel shirt, the shirt she hadn’t taken off since they had found her.

            “Alright. Fine.  I’ll leave her alone for a few hours.”

            Daryl nodded and leaned his head back, but his eyes remained on Beth. He smiled slightly when he noticed Maggie mimic his position.  They both sat there in companionable silence, neither of them talking or moving, just watching the blonde that sat on the blankets on the opposite side of the room.

            “You washed her hair yesterday,” Daryl said quietly.

            Maggie nodded.  “I thought it’d be good to get the blood out,” she said sadly.

            Daryl turned his head to look at her. 

            “It was all over the ends of her hair…the water was red by the time I managed to get all of the blood out…”

            Daryl frowned. 

            “Her clothes, they were covered in blood, too when we found her…”

            “I know…”

            “ What happened to her, Daryl?” Maggie asked, her voice breaking.

            “I wish I knew…”

            They both fell back into their companionable silence. Daryl kept his eyes resting on Beth. An image of her when they had just found her flashed into his mind.  She was on her hands and knees, her tears leaving tracks through the dirt on her face. Her clothes were covered in blood, and her skin had a layer of dried blood beneath a layer of dirt. Dark bruises, deep cuts, scratches, a split lip, a black eye; they all marred her skin. 

            The image faded away as fast as it had appeared.  Now he was left looking at Beth; the Beth that had been with them for a week now, yet had managed to remain as much of a mystery and secret as she had been when they had found her.  Her hair was back to it’s bright, beautiful blond.  Her face wasn’t blemished by tears.  The blood and dirt that had covered her skin had been washed away, revealing her pale, creamy skin.  And her clothes were clean. 

            She almost looked like she had back at the prison, or at the funeral home. But anyone who had known her would know that something was different.  Daryl could feel it.  He could feel the tension in the air whenever he was by her.  He could see the rigidness of her body whenever someone got close. And anyone, even if they had never known Beth before this, would know that something had happened to her when they saw the bandages on her wrists, the bandages that hid the marks underneath them that made Daryl’s heart constrict whenever he thought about them.

            Daryl’s thoughts were interrupted when Abraham, Rick, and everyone else walked over to him and Maggie.  The only one who wasn’t there was Beth.  Daryl looked between the bodies, his eyes searching for Beth across the room. He let out a sigh of relief when he saw her, her eyes closed.  Everyone was talking quietly, but Daryl wasn’t paying them any attention until he heard Rick’s next word’s.

            “We’re heading to Washington soon,” Rick said calmly.

            Daryl quickly looked up at him and slowly stood.  “How long?”

            “We need to go through the town first,” Sasha suggested. “ Find anything we can…food, water…”

            “And warmer clothes,” Abraham added.  “Winter’s going to be coming in a few more months. We’ll probably still be on the road.”

            “How long until we leave?”

            “I’d say a week, maybe less.”

            Daryl looked at Beth again.

            “But what about Beth?” Maggie asked worriedly, also standing up.

            “The deal was that we’d leave when she was healthy again. She’s healthy. She isn’t eating broth or soup. She doesn’t have any serious injuries. She can travel.”     

            “But she needs rest…” Maggie protested.

            “A deal’s a deal.  We need to start making our way towards Washington.  The sooner we get there the sooner we’ll get to safety and the sooner Eugene can start working on the cure.”   

            Maggie sighed heavily but nodded her head in agreement.

            “A few of us are going out tomorrow to start searching through the town. It doesn’t seem like there’s much here, but who knows what we could find,” Michonne added.

            Daryl was listening, but he had nothing else to add.  He kept his eyes on Beth.

            “Rick, Glenn, and I are going out tomorrow morning,” Carol said. “We’re going to check some of these buildings. “

            Daryl kept watching Beth.  Her eyes were open, and she had her bag sitting next to her, open.

            “It looks like there’s a small neighborhood when you get past this main street.  We’ll check those before we…”

            Daryl stopped listening.  His full attention was on Beth.  He vaguely heard the muffled voices of the conversation going on, but he was no longer paying it any attention.  He was just watching Beth.  His eyes were taking in every movement she made, and he was confused.

            She was emptying her bag, or at least that’s what he thought she was doing at first.  But after a few minutes he noticed that she putting things into her bag.  She put a few cans of food, a can opener, granolas bars, water, matches, a first aid kit. Daryl was utterly confused.

            He kept watching her.  Her knife, which she had kept held tightly in her hand ever since he had given it back to her wasn’t there.  His eyes searched around her for a minute, thinking that she must have set it down, before falling to the leather sheathe resting against her thigh.  She had sheathed her knife.

            He had no idea what she was doing.  He watched as she pulled her boots on, which Maggie had insisted she keep off while she was inside to make her more comfortable. He watched as she closed her bag, zipping the zipper, snapping the snaps closed.  Then he watched as she stood up, put her arms through the straps of her bag so that it was resting comfortably against her back, and then started walking towards the stairs.

            He reacted before he even knew what he was doing.  He quickly pushed past everyone standing in front of him and started to make his way towards her.  She was just feet from the top of the stairs.  She had barely moved from her blanket-bed since they had found this place, and now she was up and walking towards the stairs.

            She started to walk down the stairs, and he desperately wanted to reach out and grab her, but he didn’t.  Instead he decided to follow her.  And from the sound of it, everyone else was following her, too. Apparently they were all just as confused and curious as he was.

            “Where are you going, Beth?” Daryl finally asked when they reached the bottom of the stairs.

            “I’m leaving,” she said quietly, turning the corner at the bottom of the staircase and walking into the main room of the building.

            Leaving? Daryl was confused at first. Leaving?  What did that mean?  Was that some code for something?  And then it all made sense.  His brain caught up to her one-word response and it suddenly made sense.  Everything she had been doing as they had been talking, her packing her bag, her putting her knife in its sheathe, putting on her boots. She had been preparing to leave.

            But she wasn’t just going to leave.  She couldn’t leave.  He wasn’t going to let her leave.  She was dangerously close to the door.  In the time it had took Daryl to process what she had meant, she had quickened her pace and was just a few yards from the door.  He rushed forward, passing her, and stopped in front of the door, turning to face her, blocking the only exit she had.

            Beth immediately stopped walking, glaring at him. 

            “Leaving?” Daryl repeated her words.

            “Yeah.”

            “Why?”

            Beth ignored him and tried to walk past him, but he wouldn’t let her. He put a hand on her shoulder and gently pushed her back.  And to his surprise, she didn’t flinch away from him and her body didn’t stiffen like it had anytime anyone else had touched her.

            “Why are you trying to leave, Beth?”

            Beth didn’t say anything.

            “Beth,” Maggie said, demanding an answer from her little sister.

            “I can take care of myself.  I can survive on my own.”

            Wow. A response that was more than one-word. Daryl was shocked.

            “Yeah, maybe you can.  But that’s no reason to just get up and leave you’re family,” Rick said calmly.

            “You wouldn’t understand.”           

            “Then tell us, Beth.”

            Beth once again tried to walk past Daryl.  And once again, Daryl gently pushed her back.

            “I’m leaving.  You can’t just keep me here.”         

            “Beth,” Maggie said calmly.  “Tell us what’s going on.  Why do you want to leave?”

            Beth hesitated but then turned and looked at Maggie, most of everyone else standing behind the older Greene. 

            “You’re not going to want me here.”

            “What?” Maggie asked in disbelief.

            “I’m leaving,” Beth said defiantly, walking towards the door a third time.

            Daryl placed his hand on her shoulder and pushed her back with a little more force than the other two times.  Beth took a few steps back, her eyes immediately finding his. And for the first time he saw something in them; they weren’t just blank or sad.  She looked determined and angry.  But Daryl was determined and angry, too.  He was not letting her leave this building alone.

            They just stared at each other.  Neither of them willing to give up.  Both wanting to win, wanting to get their way.  And Daryl could feel everyone’s eyes on them, all watching them, wondering what was going to happen next.  And after a few minutes, Beth relented.  She took a step back, her eyes still meeting Daryl’s, and spoke the first words that had been spoken by anyone in the building in minutes.

            ”You need to ask me the questions,” she said quietly.

            “What?” Daryl asked, confused.

            “The three questions.  You need to ask me them.”

            Daryl shook his head, his body relaxing slightly.  “Beth, you’re already a part of this group. We know you.  You don’t need to answer those questions.”

            Beth shook her head.  “You knew me, but you don’t know me; not anymore.  I’m not the same, Daryl.  I’ve changed.”

            “I’m not asking you the questions, Beth.”

            “If you want me to stay, you need to.  You need to know the answers.  And then you can tell me if you still want me to stay.”

            Daryl sighed.  “How many walkers have you killed?”

            “Too many to count.”

            Daryl nodded, not really seeing the point in this.  “How many people have you killed?”

            “Five. I’ve killed five people,” she said, her voice staying even.

            Daryl’s heart stopped.  He suddenly knew why she had him asking her these questions.  She had been through something terrible, and she had had to do something terrible.  He hated that she had blood on her hands, but he was dreading her answer to the next question.

            “Why?”

            And with that question it seemed like she was transported to a different world.  Her whole demeanor changed. The anger and determination in her eyes faltered, giving way to a sadness so deep it hurt him to see it.   But her sudden shift was only momentary, it only lasted for the briefest of seconds before the determination returned and her mouth opened to answer the question.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We finally got some insight into what happened to Beth, or rather, what she's had to do. She's killed someone; she's taken five lives. But why?
> 
> Ah, you'll just have to wait to find out until Ch.7!
> 
> Please leave a review and let me know what you think!


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: This chapter has a lot of violence in it and is brutal. It gives answers to what happened to Beth, and it may be a trigger for some people. If you don't want to read such things, just skip the section in italics, the rest is safe to read.

Ch.7

            Maggie had finally left her alone, and she knew that she had Daryl to thank for that.  She was finally able to just be alone and not have to worry about Maggie constantly asking her questions or pushing her to eat something or drink a few more sips of water. She could just be alone, just her; no questions, expectant stares, just her and her thoughts. But her thoughts often times led to dark places. 

            Dark places.  That was her mind now. Dark places with dark thoughts. But her thoughts just weren’t thoughts, the majority of them were memories.  She tried not to let her mind wander to such dark places when people were around her, but the darkness always crept forward, slowly inching its way out. And she was afraid that one day they would all see it.

            “Washington. We’re heading to Washington.”

            A deep, male voice, which she had recently come to familiarize with the tall, burly man named Abraham, interrupted her thoughts. All of her attention was now on the current conversation taking place across the room, the conversation that included everyone but her. 

            “How long until we leave?”

            “I’d say maybe a week.”

            A week.  A week until they were to set off on the road to Washington, D.C.  A week until she would be forced to converse, live side-by-side, and survive on the road with these people, the people she had considered her family. But so much had changed since the farm and the prison, and while she may recognize each them, she knew that in time they wouldn’t recognize her.  She knew that in time they would realize that she had changed.  The darkness that she had been holding back, trying to keep at bay locked up inside of her would slowly seep out, baring its ugly teeth at the people she had considered family.   

            She remembered back to the time between fleeing the farm and finding the prison.  The long months when they were on the road.  Everyday was a fight for survival. And everyday they had gotten to know more and more about each other.  They had to. They had to know everything about each other in order to survive.  They had to understand how each member of their group worked.

            And she knew that being on the road meant there would be know way of escaping Maggie’s questions.  No way of escaping the lingering stares that would surely grow more intense as the darkness seeped out of her.  She knew that with every mile closer they got to Washington, more of her secrets would be revealed. And she desperately wanted to keep her secrets a secret.  She didn’t want anyone to know.  Her secrets were hers, and only hers.  Nobody else needed to know. She wanted to keep her secrets and her darkness to herself.

            So Beth made a decision, then and there.  She wasn’t going to Washington, D.C.  She wasn’t going to travel with these people. She was going to leave. She was going to fend for herself. And she knew that it would break her heart just as much as it would probably break their’s, but she needed to do this to protect them.  She didn’t want to see their faces when her secrets came out, and leaving them, walking away from them, meant that she wouldn’t have to.  Leaving meant that nobody else would have to get hurt.

            She looked at her knife, which was held tightly in her hand, and slowly put it back in its sheath.  It felt weird. The weight of her knife resting against her thigh had become unfamiliar over the past week.  The absence of her knife in her hand felt even stranger. She had become so accustomed to keeping her knife out, in her hand, ready to use it if need be. But for now, it had to be in its sheath. She knew that she would be using it plenty when she was back to being on her own.

            Reaching over and grabbing her bag, she quickly opened it. There wasn’t much in there. Not enough to survive for long. She looked around her, surveying the supplies she had close to her.  Matches; she knew that she would need those until she could figure out how to make a fire or get the supplies she needed to make a proper fire.  She quickly snatched the first aid kit that Bob had left sitting beside her.  Her wrists were still tender and raw, so she knew she would have to keep cleaning them so they didn’t get infected.  And God only knew what other injuries she could get when it was only a girl against a whole world of walkers…and worse, people. 

            Then she began to put the obvious items in her bag.  Food.  She put plenty of food in her bag.  Canned food. Granola bars.  She didn’t want to run out of food.  She wanted enough to last her for a little while. And she made sure to put a can opener in her bag so she could open any cans.

            She folded up the smallest blanket she had and stuffed it in her bag. She knew that colder months were approaching.  If she wasn’t able to find suitable shelter, shelter that would keep her warm during the winter, she at least wanted a blanket to keep her warm.  She fished the flashlight out of Maggie’s bag and put it in her bag.  She knew that the rest of the group had plenty of flashlights, so Maggie wouldn’t miss hers.

            Beth reached next to her and grabbed her boots, quickly putting them on. Maggie had made her take them off. She hadn’t wanted to, but she listened to Maggie just to make her stop nagging her.  She had wanted to keep them on, just incase she had to get up and run, but she had known Maggie would keep insisting she take them off until Beth listened to her.

            Beth zipped her bag and buttoned the buttons.  She didn’t look at the group across the room, but from the sounds of it, they were still deep in discussion over the trip to Washington. She figured nobody would notice her, that it would be easy for her to slip out without any trouble. They may miss her for a little bit, but they’d get use to not having her there.

            She stood up and tossed her bag onto her back, taking a moment to adjust it so that it was comfortable.  Then she walked towards the stairs.  As she started to descend the stairs she heard the footsteps.  It was just one set of footsteps at first. She knew that those would be Daryl’s, and she fought the urge to roll her eyes.  But then she heard a stampede of footsteps following behind him, following behind her as they all made their way down the stairs.

            “Where are you going, Beth?” Daryl’s voice called from behind her.

            Wasn’t it obvious what she was doing?  Her bag was packed.  Her shoes were on. She was headed for the door. Headed outside.

            “I’m leaving,” Beth said, rounding the corner at the bottom of the stairs.

            The door was in sight.  It was just feet from her.  She was feet from freedom, feet from being able to relax.  She could feel the tension beginning to leave her body just at the thought of not having to fight off the darkness anymore, of being able to be alone to her secrets and her memories.  But that freedom and that relaxation was ripped from her when Daryl pushed in front of her and stood in the doorway.  And then the onslaught of questions began.

            “Leaving? Why?”

            “I can take care of myself.” 

            She’d done it before.  Yeah, it may not have been pretty, and she may have been close to death’s doorstep when she had found Daryl and Maggie and the rest of them, but she had been surviving. And she had been weak then. She was stronger now. She wasn’t exhausted. She wasn’t injured. She had food and matches and a flashlight.  She could make it on her own.

            Beth walked to the door, trying to walk past Daryl, but he pushed her back. And then the questions ended.  But they were replaced by Rick urging her to stay.  Maggie urging her to stay.  Everyone was urging her to stay.  Did they not understand that they wouldn’t want her to stay?  Did they not understand that they would hate the person she had become? They all thought that she was the same, but they were all wrong.  Did they not see that she was trying to protect them, trying to save them from seeing who she was now?

            And the urging continued, the persuasions.  But they weren’t working.  She wasn’t going to stay.  She tried to walk past Daryl again, and again he pushed her back.  She tried to plead her case without giving too much away. She told them that they wouldn’t want her here.  And she walked to the door again, only to be pushed back by Daryl.

            Her eyes shot to his, glaring at him angrily.  She was trying to protect them, but they were making it so hard. If she stayed it would just cause a world of hurt for them, and the wounds that were still fresh in her mind would reopen, bigger and more lethal; lethal to everyone around her.

            She held his stare for what seemed like hours, maybe even days, but she knew it was only minutes, seconds.  And she saw the determination in them.  He wasn’t going to give in.  He wasn’t going to just let her leave.  She had to get them to understand.  So she did the only thing she could think of, the only thing she thought would give them the idea that they wouldn’t want here there, but would allow her to keep most of her secrets to herself.

            “You need to ask me the questions,” Beth said, taking a step away from Daryl.

            “What?” Daryl asked.

            “The three questions.  You need to ask me them.”

            “Beth, you’re already a part of this group.  We know you.  You don’t need to answer those questions.”

            Beth shook her head.  “You knew me, but you don’t know me; not anymore.  I’m not the same, Daryl.  I’ve changed.”

            Daryl sighed softly, finally giving in.  “How many walkers have you killed?”

            “Too many to count.”

            Daryl nodded and continued with the questions, his tone making it seem like he thought this was stupid and a waste of time.  “How many people have you killed?”

            “Five. I’ve killed five people,” she said, her voice staying even.

            And Beth saw the change in his features.  She saw his eyes widen slightly.  She noticed how his body went rigid, his fists clenching slightly before relaxing. But the worst was the sadness in his eyes.  This is the reaction she didn’t want to see, the reaction she knew was being spread across the room. And she knew that the reactions would only get worse if more of her secrets were revealed.

            “Why?”

* * *

 

            _The door opened, casting a shallow light into the otherwise dimly lit room.  She moved her hands to cover her eyes, the chains shackling her to the pipe, weaving its way into the wall, clanking and clattering together, the rope, which was meant to secure her wrists further, biting deeper into her raw, bloody skin._

_She could make out the silhouette of a tall man, his shoulders broad, his arms muscular. She immediately knew who it was. Martin.  “Marty Boy,” as she had learned the other men called him. She didn’t know where the nickname came from, because nothing about Martin was boy-like.  He was man.  Tough. Muscular.  Brutal.  She feared him. She feared all of them. But Martin was one of the worse. There was only one man she dreaded seeing in the doorway more than Martin._

_He slowly strolled over to her, his walk triumphant, and she knew why he was here.  He wasn’t there to give her food, which happened once a day and usually consisted of half a can of uncooked beans, maybe a full can of fruit if the day had been particularly rough on her or they felt she needed the extra energy to keep up with their needs._

_“You know why I’m here?” he asked, standing over her, gazing down at her._

_Beth didn’t say anything, only turned her head away from him, her body leaning against the wall._

_“I won the poker game,” he said, and she could hear the smile in his voice.  “You’re my prize.  Connor deiced to have you be his bet, but Connor lost.  Now I have you for the whole night.”_

_Beth fought off the urge to vomit. She had to remind herself that to them she was nothing more than a toy.  She was just an object.  Something to be used as they saw fit.  Something for them to use to relieve their needs, their urges._

_“Look at me.”_

_Beth ignored him, her eyes closing._

_“I said look at me!” Martin ordered, roughly grabbing ahold of her chin and jerking her head to face him._

_Beth’s eyes immediately opened, a tear slipping from one of her eyes and rolling down her cheek._

_“Don’t cry,” Martin said softly, using his thumb to gently brush away the tear._

_His touch was soft, his thumb was careful.  And the fingers that had roughly grabbed her chin relaxed, loosening softly as he continued to caress her cheek with his thumb._

_It was times like this that reminded Beth of how dangerous Martin was.  He could be gentle, really gentle.  And in a strange way he could be loving.  He could praise her, hold her as she cried, try his best to comfort her. To anyone looking in on the outside, overlooking the chains and rope and the bruises and cuts, they would probably think that Martin was a loving man in this moment._

_But Beth knew Martin. She had figured out how he worked. One moment he would be caring, and almost seem as if he regretted what he was doing to Beth, what all of these men were doing to Beth.  But in the next moment his whole demeanor would change and the brutality that had been kept at bay would explode, being released onto Beth._

_Right now Beth was only hoping that she would get the caring, gentle side of Martin. She needed that side tonight. She needed it, because if she didn’t get that side of him, if she ended up getting the side of him that was brutal, her plan would never work.  And she desperately needed this plan to work because she didn’t know how much more of this she could take._

_Martin kneeled down beside her and gingerly undid the chains and cut the rope from her hands. He frowned when he looked at her wrists. He took one of her hands in his and gently ran his thumb over the marred and raw skin, causing Beth to gasp in pain._

_“I’ll have to talk to the others about loosening your bindings.  You haven’t tried to run since we brought you here, so I think we can assume you’d be fine without being chained up,” he said, releasing her hand._

_Beth nodded once, her eyes looking down, more tears falling from her eyes.  He took his fingers and brushed the tears away again._

_“You know I don’t like it when you cry.”_

_Beth nodded._

_“You understand that we’re just doing what we have to.  It’s a part of nature.  Men have needs. Women are here to please men. And nowadays it’s hard to come across women, especially women as pretty as you,” he said, placing a soft kiss on her cheek. “Now undress,” he said, his tone becoming a little harsher and more demanding._

_Beth nodded once again and slowly stood up, having to use the wall for support.  She was weak.  Really weak. And Martin’s tone had changed. She was praying that her plan would work, but she was starting to doubt it.  She was dreading what would happen to her if her plan didn’t work. She was hoping they would just kill her, but she knew that they wouldn’t it…these men would never show that much mercy on her._

_“You’re beautiful,” Martin said._

_Beth felt his eyes roaming over her body, her body which was now naked, her clothes sitting in a pile by her feet.  Looking down at the ground she saw that he had relieved himself of his pants, leaving him in just his shirt._

_Martin closed the distance between them and roughly grabbed her hair at the nape of her neck, forcing her head back.  His mouth was on hers in an instant, and he used his strength to force her body to the ground, slamming her down a little hard, causing her to gasp in pain._

_And then it started. She had become used to it, though. It had become routine. The hands roaming her body, groping her breasts, squeezing, grabbing, pulling.  Teeth nipping at her skin, occasionally nipping too hard, leaving bite marks.  And the feeling of a man inside of her._

_She had become compliant. She had yielded to them. She had decided that it would just be easier to let them do to her what they wanted to and not fight back. And she was right. For the most part, it was easier. She’d turn her mind off and try to go somewhere else.  And soon enough it would be over._

_And her submissiveness had started to work.  They no longer kept her chained when they came to her.  Her submissiveness had allowed her to come up with a plan. And that’s why tonight she couldn’t turn her mind off.  She had to be here. She had to know what was happening to her.  She had to be attuned to Martin’s actions._

_And she was. She kept her full attention on him. She watched as he lost himself to her, becoming less and less aware of his surroundings. And that’s when she acted. Her hand inched its way over to his pants laying beside her, slowly pulling his knife from its sheath._

_He kept her eyes on his face, and when she was positive he wasn’t paying attention to her hand, only to what he was doing to her, she brought the knife up in one swift motion and jarred it into his throat.  Martin instantly stopped what he was doing, his eyes popping open in shock and pain. But his misery only lasted a second. Beth pulled his knife from his neck, causing blood to pour from the wound, and Martin collapsed on top of her, dead._

_His blood spilled from his throat onto her naked body, pooling in the hollow of her neck, running down her throat and coating her hair.  By the time she managed to push his body off of her, her body was covered in his blood, but she didn’t pay any attention to it.  She quickly pulled her clothes back on and grabbed the gun from the pocket in Martin’s jeans._

_Beth walked to the door and slowly opened it, her heart racing.  Connor was sitting outside, looking sullen, and she could only guess it was because he had lost Beth for the night.  He immediately looked up when he heard the door open, and Beth didn’t hesitate to shoot him, causing blood to spatter against the wall._

_She heard footsteps running to the room.  The gunshot had drawn the attention of the other men.  Before she knew it a man was rushing towards her.  Beth raised the gun and shot him in the chest; his body sunk to the floor in a bloody heap._

_She looked up when she saw a figure in the doorway.  Without thinking she pointed the gun at him and shot him dead, immediately followed by another man, who she put a bullet through the head.  A man was right behind him, and Beth went to shoot him, but the gun was empty. It was out of bullets._

_Beth dropped the gun and sprinted in the opposite direction.  Her plan had been going smooth until this.  She hadn’t anticipated the gun running out of bullets.  She wasn’t planning on having someone chasing her. But she was determined to escape. She couldn’t go back there. She was either going to escape or she would die right now.  She refused to go back._

_Suddenly her running stopped as large arms circled around her waist, pulling her back against a solid chest.  There was laughing in her ear as she was being pulled backwards, back towards the house. She raised her arm slightly, her hand still holding Martin’s knife, and quickly brought it back, stabbing the man in the gut._

_Warmth instantly invaded her senses.  Warmth on her back. Warmth from his blood, stickiness from his blood soaking through her shirt, starting to run down her jeans._

_Beth pulled her knife from him and he fell to the ground, nearly taking her down with him. Her hands were covered in crimson red liquid, her clothes were soaked in the same liquid.  It was blood.  Blood from the men she had just killed.  Five men. Five lives she had taken. But there were more than five of them, and she knew that they would be coming after her._

_So she ran. She ran as fast as she could. She was getting away. So far her plan had worked. Nobody was chasing her. But they would be. She knew that they wouldn’t let her go that easily.  So she ran, ran away from that house, those men, the memories she hoped would stay there._

* * *

 

Beth shook her head slightly, snapping herself from her horrific reverie.  Her eyes found Daryl’s again.  She had to answer his question.  She’d answer the question and then they would know and she would be free to leave.

            “I wish I could say it was to survive.  It was to survive, I killed them to survive,” she said slowly, quietly. “But there was a part of me that wanted them dead.”

            And the room was silent, still.  She could hear the low, guttural moan of a lone walker ambling down the street. And that was her answer. Nobody was talking. A walker was outside. She had been right. They didn’t want her here anymore. They had finally saw that she had changed.

            Taking her knife from its sheath, Martin’s knife, she walked towards the door. Daryl moved out of the way, letting her pass.  She was finally going to be free.  They had all gotten a glimpse of her darkness, a small glimpse that didn’t even begin to describe how messed up she really was, and now she could be left to wallow in her darkness by herself. Her darkness and memories wouldn’t have to taint anyone else. 

            Beth’s hand reached for the door and she slowly opened it. The creak echoed throughout the room. And she could feel their eyes on her. Everyone was looking at her. But Daryl’s eyes were burning a hole through her.  Beth moved to step forward but froze when a voice finally broke the silence.

            “You’re not leaving, Beth.”

            It was Daryl.  His voice was low, barely audible even in the complete silence.  His voice was shaking, too.  She had known that he would take it hard, probably harder than Maggie. But she was still determined to leave.

            “So you killed someone, a few someones..it doesn’t make you a bad person.”

            Beth turned and looked at him.  “Did you not hear what I just said?” she whispered.  “I killed five people, Daryl.  I wanted to kill them…I wanted them dead.”

            “Yeah. I heard ya’ loud and clear. Five people.  Five lives that can never be brought back. But I know that if you wanted to kill them, that if you didn’t just kill them for survival, that if there was a small part of you that wanted to see them dead…” he trailed off, taking a shaky breath.  “If anyone could bring you to feel that way, Beth, then I know that they did something horrible to you. I don’t know what it is. I have my guesses, I’m sure we all have our guesses about what happened to you, but I don’t know for sure. But if they did something to you, anything to you, even if they just laid a single finger on you, they deserved to die. Hell, I’d kill them myself just for taking you.  So you’re not leaving, Beth. You’re staying here. With us.  You’re family.”

            “Why don’t you understand,” Beth said, her words coming out in an aggravated sigh.  “Me staying here, staying with this group, it’s going to ruin things, ruin people. I’m messed up, Daryl. I’m not that girl you remember from the prison, or even the girl that you chased after at the funeral home. I’m different. I’ve changed.  And the fucked up part of me is just going to ruin it for everyone, because I know that you’re all going to ask questions, and one of these days I’ll break and the darkness will come spewing out of me and ruining everything for everyone else,” Beth said, her voice breaking as tears started to fall from her eyes.

            Daryl looked at her for a moment, not saying anything. He just looked at her. His eyes sad and gentle and longing. Longing to rush to her side and comfort her.  Beth was praying that he wouldn’t do that, though.  She was praying he would just let her leave.

            “We’re all a little fucked up, Beth.  It’s just the way things are now.”

            “I’m more than just a little fucked up,” she said, quickly wiping the tears from her face.

            “Nobody cares that you’re fucked up.  And we’ve all killed people.  Michonne. She killed The Governor. Think she feels bad about that? And I’ve killed plenty of people in the last few weeks that I wanted to kill.  They deserved to die.  The people that you killed, they deserved to die, too, didn’t they.”

            Beth didn’t answer him, just continued to look at him.

            “So come back upstairs, Beth.  You’re part of this fucked up family.  Whatever happened to you, maybe it has changed you.  But that doesn’t mean that we won’t want you here. “

            Daryl reached out his hand and took the knife from Beth’s hand. He slowly put it back in Beth’s sheath, his eyes staying on hers.  He brought one thumb up to her cheek and wiped the tears away and then repeated the motion on the other.  She closed her eyes. Martin had done that. But this wasn’t Martin. This was Daryl. And she knew that Daryl would never hurt her.

            “Will you come back upstairs now?  All of this commotion is drawing walkers.”

            Beth nodded slowly.  She wasn’t sure if this is what she wanted.  She still dreaded the day they found out the truth.  She knew that her secrets would revealed, that Maggie would find a way to pull them out of her.  But maybe they would let her leave then, after they truly realized how messed up she was and she had ruined everything.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So we finally got some answers as to what happened to Beth. I was hesitant to reveal so much in this chapter, but as I wrote it I felt that I had to. Now we understand what happened to her and why she wants to leave. But she's staying...for now.
> 
> Please let me know what you think by leaving a review! And thank you for all of the reviews, follows, and favorites!


	8. Chapter 8

Ch.8

            Daryl looked at her and sighed.  They had managed to convince her to go back upstairs, but now she was sitting by herself, completely distancing herself from everyone and everything. She wasn’t happy; he knew that, but there was no way in hell he was going to just let her leave. He didn’t care what she had done, what had been done to her, or what she would end up doing; she was staying here, she was a part of this family, and he wasn’t going to let her leave.

            Bending down he grabbed the familiar black backpack, the one that he had been carrying with him since he had found it.  He had been holding onto it, waiting to let it go, praying that he would be able to let it go.  He hadn’t wanted the weight of that backpack on his back, but he had carried it. It had been his reminder of her, of his unspoken promise to her that he would find her.

            Daryl slowly walked over to her and gently dropped the bag down beside her before sitting down and filling the empty space next to her. She looked at the bag and then to him, but he couldn’t tell what she was thinking.  It was funny, but in a sad way.  Her face used to tell him everything.  Even before the prison, during the time they had been on the road after the farm, he had been able to tell what she was thinking just by looking at her. She hadn’t hid her emotions; she had expressed them, which he had come to admire.  But the girl sitting next to him now was closed off, keeping her emotions to herself, not wanting anyone to see.

            “I made everyone go back to the funeral home once we got out of Terminus,” Daryl said, his voice gravely as he pointed towards Beth’s bag. “It was still on the ground, so I grabbed it.  Told myself that I’d give it back to you when I found you.”

            Beth didn’t say anything, but she managed to cast a quick glance at the bag before looking forward again, away from Daryl.  He was getting the sense that she wanted to be left alone, but he didn’t want to leave her alone.  He suddenly had the immense fear that as soon as he left her she would try to sneak away again.  So he stayed sitting beside her.

            “I put everything back inside of it.  You’re journal’s in there,” he said quietly. 

            She looked at him for a moment and then looked away again, still not saying anything.  Shit. Did she think that he had looked at it? He hadn’t.  He had wanted to, but he had resisted the urge.

            “I didn’t read anything in it,” he reassured her.  “I put everything in your bag and snapped the button…it hasn’t been opened since,” he said quietly, studying her face, looking for any signs of a reaction.  “I was thinkin’ that maybe you could start writing in it again.  You know, maybe it would help ya’ sort through your thoughts or somethin’.”

            “I’m not that person anymore,” Beth mumbled. 

            “What d’ya mean?” Daryl asked confusedly.

            “I’m not the same person.  I was just a silly kid back at the farm, the prison…writing in that journal was just something I did, thought it’d take my mind off of things, make things better when they were bad.”

            “You seemed happy when you were writing in it.  Maybe if you write in it now it will help.”

            “Nothing I do will get me back to the person that I was before I was taken,” Beth whispered quietly, her voice solemn.  “That person’s long gone, disappeared forever,” she whispered after a long pause, her voice even quieter than it was before.

            “Change isn’t always a bad thing, Beth.”

            “Maybe not.  I guess it just all depends on how you’ve changed.”

            Daryl looked at her for a moment, not saying anything, just taking her in.

            “How have you changed?” he asked, his voice hesitant, hesitant to hear the answer.

            “You’ll find out soon enough.”

            Daryl sighed and leaned his head back against the wall, mimicking the way that Beth was sitting.  Neither of them was looking at the other, their eyes looking at the blank, dingy wall across from them.  But they were both listening, listening to each other, listening to the long pauses that dragged out after the other spoke.

            “You can tell me.  I mean, if you’re so sure that I’ll find out, then why not just tell me now?”

            “Do you really want to know?”

            “If you want to tell me.”

            “I can survive now…I know how to survive.”

            “And that’s a bad thing?”

            “It is if you’ve had to do the things that I’ve done to survive.”

            “We’ve all done bad things, things we’d rather forget, things we wish we ha-.”

            “No. You don’t understand,” Beth said, cutting Daryl off from finishing his sentence.  “I know that we’ve all had to do bad things. I know that everyone else here has taken somebody else’s life.  I know that we have to kill to survive and that some people deserve to be killed for what they’ve done.  But what I’ve had to do to survive and what everyone else here has had to do to survive is completely different.”

            “Why do you think that?”

            “It just is.”

            “I don’t believe you.  ‘It just is’ isn’t a good enough answer.”

            “To make you understand I’d have to tell you everything, and I’m not in the mood to tell you everything.”

            Daryl nodded, knowing that he had already pushed Beth far enough in his questioning.

            ”I still want to leave,” Beth said after another long pause in the conversation.

            “Yeah, and I want a world without walkers.  But that ain’t happenin’ anytime soon, and you’re not leaving.”

            “You’re not going to want me here.  I tried to warn you guys, but you’re not listening to me.  Just give it a little bit longer and then you’ll see…you’re going to be wishing that you had let me leave.”

            Daryl sighed heavily.  “None of us are going to be wishing you had left, Beth, no matter what.”  
            And the silence started again.  And neither of them looked at each other.  Daryl looked away from the dingy wall and scanned the room with his eyes.  Nobody was doing much.  Everyone was settling in for the night.  There were a few quiet conversations taking place, but nothing else. But he noticed how every few moments the others would quickly look at Beth before looking away. He guessed that they were all checking to make sure that she wasn’t trying to leave again.

            “Terminus was a bad place, wasn’t it?  It wasn’t a sanctuary.”

            “You saw the signs?”

            “I saw one of them…” Beth said quietly, and Daryl got the sense that there was more to the story.

            “Is that where you were heading?”

            “No.”

            “Why didn’t you go there when you saw the signs?  All of us did.”

            “Because it was a bad place.”

            “How’d you know that if you never went there?”

            “I heard that it was bad.”

            “From who?” Daryl asked quietly, even though he figured that he already knew the answer.

            “I just heard about it,” Beth murmured quietly.

            “It wasn’t good.  It was all a trick to get people to go there.  After the funeral home, after I chased the car that took you I ran into this group of men,” Daryl said, looking at Beth.

            Beth slowly turned her head and looked at Daryl.  He guessed that she had probably been wondering what had happened to him after she was kidnapped.  And maybe if Daryl told her, maybe if he told her everything that she had missed, maybe it would get Beth to open up about what had happened to her.

            “The men were assholes, but I was at a crossroads.  I didn’t know which way the car had gone. So I went with them. Figured it was better to be with a group than to be alone…safety in numbers.  Turned out that they were trying to find Rick since he had killed one their men. When we found them they almost killed all four of us.”

            “All four of you?”

            “Yeah. Rick was with Carl and Michonne.”

            “How’d you get out of it?”

            Daryl smirked.  He remembered Beth asking him that same question on the porch of the moonshine cabin. After that huge fight they had had that was fueled by a drunken asshole, built up rage, and a simple teenage drinking game.  Things had changed between them after that.

            “Rick tore the guys throat out with his teeth,” Daryl said simply, shrugging his shoulders.  “We ended up killing the others.  Then we went to Terminus.”

            “What happened when you got there?  Was everyone else there?”

            “Yeah, they were all there, but they were locked up in a train car. Turns out that the people there liked to eat human meat.  They locked us up with the others.  Everyone was there. Sasha, Bob.  Abraham, Tara, Eugene, Rosita.  Glenn, Maggie…”

            “What about Carol and Tyreese and Judith?”

            “We met up with them after we got out of Terminus.”   

            “Oh…”

            “Getting out wasn’t that hard.  They had someone come with food everyday.  Didn’t take long to overpower the man and get his gun.  Then we ran.  Ran into Carol and Tyreese a few days later.”

            “What’d you do after you got out?” Beth asked quietly, looking away from him.

            He knew that this was her way of asking if he had really looked for her. He knew that she wanted to know how serious he had been about looking for her. 

            “As soon as we got out I started looking for ya’, Beth. I promised Maggie that I’d find you. Abraham wanted to go to D.C., but he said he’d help us look.  I didn’t know where to start, so I went to the funeral home, tried to look for any clues that I could’ve missed that night.  But there wasn’t anything to go on.  A car doesn’t leave the same kind of tracks that an animal in the woods does.”

            “Didn’t think that it would,” Beth mumbled.

            “I chased that car all night, Beth.  Even when I couldn’t see it anymore I kept chasing it. And then I couldn’t run anymore, couldn’t even walk.  So I just sat down in the middle of the road,” he said, his voice hinting at desperation, the desperation he had felt when he had realized that she was gone. “What happened to you Beth? Where did you go?”

            “You probably don’t want to know the answer to that,” Beth said quietly, trying her best to keep her voice even, but failing to keep the waver out of it.

            “Maybe I won’t like the answer, but I need to know.”

            And it was the truth.  He needed to know.  He needed to know who had taken her.  He needed to know what had happened between the time he had told her to run and when he had finally made it outside.  He needed to know what had caused her to shut herself out from everyone else.

            “Please, Beth,” he said, his voice begging her.  “I’ve been going through every scenario possible. Ever since you were taken my mind has been going wild, wondering what happened to you.”

            Beth scoffed.  “Every scenario? I’m sure none of the scenario’s you’ve imagined come close to the truth.”

            “Then tell me the truth…”

            Beth leaned her head back against the wall.  She was ignoring him.  She was shutting him out, refusing to answer him.  He wanted to push her, try to get it out of her, but he didn’t. Instead he leaned back against the wall again.  Minutes passed, minutes that seemed like hours, and neither of them spoke until Beth surprised him and broke the silence.

            “I listened to you.  I grabbed my bag and went out a window.  Went to the road, had to dodge a few walkers.  But running’s kind of hard when you have a messed up ankle,” Beth said, laughing sadly. “And you kind of need to run to get away from someone trying to take you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter was mainly dialogue, but I feel that it was very important. It was all Daryl and Beth, no one else. And it's kind of the first time they've held an actual conversation since they've been reunited. And Daryl tried to get it out of Beth, he tried to get her to tell him about what happened to her, but she still isn't budging.
> 
> Please review and tell me what you think!


	9. Chapter 9

Ch.9

            _She sat down at the table, placing her journal down in front of her.  She knew that Daryl was going to make them leave soon, that they wouldn’t be able to stay here.  The funeral home had been a lucky find, but she felt guilty for taking so much and not saying thank you before they left._

_“I’m gonna leave a thank you note,” she said softly, picking up her pen and making the first marks on the blank piece of paper._

_“Why?” Daryl asked, looking at her strangely._

_“For when they come back…if they come back…even if they’re not coming back, I still wanna say thanks.”_

_She wasn’t stupid. While she wanted to believe that whoever had been staying at this place was still alive, that they were just gone for a little bit but were going to come back, she knew that there was a chance that they wouldn’t come back.  So she’d leave them a note, thanking them for giving them a place to stay and get some much needed rest and the redneck brunch that her and Daryl had been enjoying all day long.  But she wanted to thank them for the piano, too._

_“Maybe you don’t have to write that,” Daryl said, nodding his head in the direction of the paper._

_At that Beth looked up at him._

_“Maybe we can stick around here a little while.  When they come back, we’ll just make it work.  They may be nuts, but, maybe they’re alright,” he said, taking another bite of the jelly he had been munching on all day long._

_“So you do think there are still good people around,” she said, not able to help the smile that formed on her face._

_Daryl shrugged his shoulders, looking away from her, continuing to eat the jelly in an attempt to distract himself._

_“What changed your mind?”_

_“You know,” he said, glancing at her out of the corner of his eyes._

_“What?”_

_“Mhmmhmm.”_

_“Beth rolled her eyes. “Don’t ‘mhmmhmm.’ What changed your mind?”_

_He just looked at her. His eyes didn’t leave her face. His intense gaze boring down on her, just looking at her.  And she knew what he meant.  She had changed his mind. She was the reason he was considering staying here.  She was the reason he was beginning to believe that there were still good people around, that there was still good in the world._

_“Oh,” she said breathlessly, not able to form any other word._

_The moment was broken by the rattling of cans, causing them both to turn their heads, breaking the comfortable silence and lingering stare they had been sharing. Daryl reached for the jar of pig’s feet, unscrewing the cap and pulling one of the gross items out._

_“I’m gonna give that mutt one more chance,” he said, getting to his feet and walking out of the room._

_Beth was alone, the candlelight dimly illuminating the room, casting strange shadows on the wall. She heard the door open. She was hoping that Daryl would be able to get the dog to come inside.  She couldn’t remember the last time she had seen a dog.  And then everything changed, the peacefulness ended._

_“Beth! Beth!” Daryl yelled loudly._

_Beth immediately stood up. She could hear the panic in his voice. Something was wrong. She looked to where he had been sitting and noticed that he had left his crossbow.  Without hesitating, she picked it up and slowly limped towards the main entrance._

_Daryl was standing there, his back pressed against the door.  She heard groans, and her attention was brought to the large group of walkers pushing against the door.  Daryl reached his hand out for his crossbow and Beth quickly tossed it to him._

_“Run! Run!” he yelled at her, waving his hand for her to go._

_Beth shook her head. She wasn’t leaving him. She couldn’t leave him._

_Daryl moved away from the door, quickly turning around to face it, his crossbow aimed and ready to shoot. The walkers threw the door open, tumbling inside.  Both Beth and Daryl started to back away._

_“Beth, grab your bag, go through a window.  Get your shit!”_

_He was leading the walkers away from her now, going in the opposite direction she had went. Her heart was racing. She couldn’t leave him. She didn’t want to be alone. She didn’t want him to be alone._

_“I’m not gonna leave you.”_

_“Go to the road! I’ll meet you there!”_

_Beth hesitated, standing in the doorway to a room she wasn’t familiar with.  She knew that staying in this house was a death sentence for her. She had an injured ankle, which meant she wouldn’t be able to outrun the walkers in the house. He had promised to meet her at the road, so that’s where she would be waiting._

_She made her way back to the kitchen.  The candles were still lit.  Her journal was still sitting open, the pen lying on the pages.  She quickly grabbed her bag and threw the journal and pen in there before slinging the back pack onto her back.  She looked around the room and saw a window, immediately limping over to it._

_It was boarded, just like every other window in the funeral home.  The boards were meant to keep the walkers out, but right now they were keeping Beth in.  Slowly lifting the bottom glass panel, she began to push against the boards, but they weren’t budging._

_She sighed frustratedly. She didn’t know how to get out. And then she rushed over to the table, pushing everything off of it and then scooting it over to the window. She climbed on top of the table, positioning herself so that her knees were bent, her feet resting against the boards. With all of the force she could, she kicked at the boards.  Again and again and again. Pain shot up her leg, her ankle feeling as if it was going to explode with each forceful blow to the boards. And then finally one of the boards gave way, the others following shortly after._

_She was smart. She looked out the window to check for walkers. When she saw that this small area was clear, she hopped out, being careful to land on her good ankle. And then she did what Daryl told her, she ran.  She ran as fast as she could, but running was impossible with her ankle, so she slowed her pace, limping as fast as she could to the road, dodging the occasional walker that lunged at her._

_She reached the black pavement a few minutes later.  Daryl wasn’t there. The road was empty. There weren’t any walkers. It was just her. Her breathing was ragged from the exertion of getting out of the funeral home and to the road. She would wait here, wait here like Daryl said, wait here for Daryl to come out, and then they would find someplace else, someplace safe to stay._

_But then there was a bright light. The crunch of gravel against the pavement.  She was confused. She couldn’t tell what was going on. The light was blinding her, and she raised a hand to shield her eyes.  Then she heard a door open and then shut.  It was a car._

_And for a brief moment she felt herself relax.  It was Daryl. Daryl had gotten out and found a car. They would be able to drive in a car and find someplace safe to stay.  But then the figure got closer, and Beth backed up.  And though she could only make out a shadowy silhouette, Beth knew that it wasn’t Daryl.  Daryl was still in the house.  He would have met her on the road before he went off and found a car._

_The figure kept walking closer and Beth kept backing up.  She turned on her good heel and started to move as fast as she could. She didn’t know who this person was and Daryl wasn’t here._

_But then she was roughly pulled backwards by a hand grabbing her backpack.  She stumbled back, putting weight on her ankle and nearly collapsing.  The person was pulling her backwards, back towards himself.  She managed to wriggle free from the backpack and began to run, only managing to go a few paces faster than a vigorous walk._

_And she thought that she had a chance.  She had believed that she had an actual chance of getting away.  She didn’t hear anyone following her, and she thought that she had made it until a muscular arm wrapped around her waist, pulling her back against a warm body wearing a thin jacket._

_And she couldn’t help the scream that escaped her throat.  A scream of fear.  A scream for help. A scream that she hoped would catch the attention of a walker.  A scream that she was praying would reach the ears of Daryl._

_Instinctually she reached for her knife, something Daryl had taught her to do whenever she felt threatened in any way.  In one quick movement she unsheathed the sharp blade, but a hand was at her wrist, squeezing tightly, causing her to loosen her grip and drop the knife._

_She screamed again. The hand went to her mouth, muffling the cry for help.  She felt her feet dragging against the pavement as the man pulled her backwards, back towards the car.  And she began to panic. She began to fight. She began to kick as both of her hands went to the hand covering her mouth, desperately trying to pull it away so that her screams could be heard._

_And she felt the tears trailing down her face.  She felt her heart sinking further and further with each step the man took towards the car. She was trying to get away, but she wasn’t making any progress.  And she felt herself getting more and more tired, the energy draining from her even with the adrenaline coursing through her veins._

_Another car door opened. Another figure stepped out. Her vision was blurry from her tears. Her screams were muffled by the large, calloused hand.  The arm around her waist was getting tighter, making it impossible to fight back. But she kept trying to get away. She kept dragging her feet. She kept trying to pry the hand away._

_She felt something hit her head.  There was a sudden pain. She felt the warm trickle of blood beginning to run down the side of her face.  The world was spinning, getting darker and darker.  She couldn’t fight back anymore  .She heard muffled voices.  And then the world around her faded into complete darkness._

* * *

 

Beth woke with a gasp, the same way she had woken for the past ten days.  She had been having the same dream every night, recounting the same memory in her head every time she fell asleep ever since she had talked to Daryl and he had asked her what had happened.

            They were on the road now, had been for six days, and she hadn’t spoken a word to Daryl since he had asked her.  She had shut herself out to everyone the moment Daryl had asked her what had happened to her after he had told her to run.  She backed out of any conversations taking place, and would occasionally say yes or no when she was asked a question.

            Looking around their makeshift camp for the night, she noticed that everyone was starting to pack up.  She was grateful that nobody was looking at her.  She figured that they must have gotten used to the strangled screams and loud gasps that woke her up; either that, or they had taken her glares as a sign not to pay any attention to them.

            She began to pack up her things, putting her knife back in its sheath as she began to fold up the blankets she had been using.  Maggie had insisted that Beth take her blanket, saying that Beth needed it more and that Maggie and Glenn could share a blanket. She was thankful for the extra blanket, too, because the nights got cold and she refused to sleep next to another body.

            And she was carrying her old bag, the one that Daryl had given back to her, but she hadn’t opened it yet.  She knew that she would probably never open it.  What was in that bag belonged to someone else, the items belonged to a naïve girl who had believed that there was still good in the world, a girl who somehow had been able to see the good in anyone.  But she wasn’t that girl anymore, and looking into that bag seemed like an invasion of somebody else’s privacy.

            “Everyone ready to go?” Rick called out, his eyes scouring over everyone, making sure everyone was packed.

            Beth slowly stood up, slinging the black bag onto her back. She reached down to grab her blankets, but stopped midway when a rough hand reached them first. She didn’t have to look at the familiar face, the shaggy hair, the blue eyes to know that it was Daryl.

            “I got ‘em,” he said softly, grabbing the blankets and stuffing them into his bag.

            Beth took a step back.  This had become the morning routine.  Daryl would take her blankets and put them in his bag.  The group would start walking again, and Beth would go to the back where she could be alone.  But her solitude never lasted long, because Daryl would slow his pace until everyone had passed him and he was walking beside her.

            Beth didn’t even look at Daryl before she walked away. She didn’t thank him for carrying her blankets.  She simply took her spot at the back of the group as they headed back towards the road. And it wasn’t even five minutes before Daryl was at her side.

            “Hey,” he said quietly, glancing over at her.

            Beth kept walking, her eyes glued to the ground.

            “You sleep alright?”

            She didn’t answer him.  She was getting tired of this.  It was the same thing every day.  After he fell to the back of the group with her, he would start a one-way conversation. She knew that it was his attempt to get her to talk, but she wasn’t taking the bait. 

            “You eat anything for breakfast?  You’re still pretty thin.”

            Beth let out a soft, quiet sigh, rolling her eyes.

            “If ya’ get hungry, I have some granola bars, but that’s about all we have right now.”

            Beth wanted to scream when Maggie made her way back to them. Beth was now effectively sandwiched between the two, Daryl on her left and Maggie on her right. All she wanted was to be alone.

            “Hey, Bethy,” Maggie said, smiling softly as she brushed a strand of hair out of Beth’s eyes.  “There’s a town coming up.  We’re going to stop there. Hopefully they have a grocery store so we can get some food.”

            Maggie looked to Daryl when Beth didn’t say anything, and Beth saw the frown on her sister’s face.  Maggie was trying to do the same thing, she was trying to get Beth to talk, to say something, anything, to give more than a one-word answer.

            “Are you warm enough at night?  Maybe we can find you another blanket or a thicker shirt.”        

            “I’m fine.”

            “Bob said that you haven’t been letting him look at your wrists…”

            “I’m keepin’ them clean.”

            “Beth, you should let Bob clean them.”

            “I said that I’m keepin’ them clean,” Beth mumbled.

            Maggie nodded.

            “Town’s up ahead,” Daryl said quietly, raising a finger and pointing.

            It didn’t take them long to find the grocery store. It was practically the only thing in the town other than a library and diner.  Rick and the others cleared the store while Beth waited outside with Carol, who was holding Judith.  Beth had wanted to help, but the others had told her that she was still too weak, that it would be better if she stayed outside and helped Carol with Judith. Beth was motioned inside by Maggie a few minutes later, Carol following her in.

            The store wasn’t big, but it wasn’t small either.  And much to Beth’s surprise, the shelves were almost fully stocked. Beth summed it up to the town being in the middle of nowhere, and most people had gone to the big cities that had offered sanctuary during the start of the outbreak.

            Beth broke away from the group and began to aimlessly wander the aisles. She knew that she should be helping, that she should be looking for food that they could use, but she wasn’t. She was taking this opportunity to have time alone.  She was standing in front a rack of magazines when Maggie walked up to her.

            “Here,” Maggie said, extending her arm.

            Beth looked down and saw that Maggie was holding a small box in her hand.

            “Figured we should get them while we can,” Maggie said, laughing softly.

            Beth looked at the box again and she felt the blood drain from her face. Maggie was handing her a box of tampons. A box of tampons for when she was on her period. 

            “You okay?” Maggie asked worriedly.

            It was in this moment that Beth realized that she was late. The last time she had been on her period was before the Governor attacked the prison, before she had to flee the prison with Daryl.  But that had been weeks ago, maybe months.  She didn’t really know how much time had passed between the prison and her being found, but she knew that her period was late.

            “Beth, i-is something wrong?”

            Beth shook her head.  “No. Nothing,” she said, her shaking voice revealing her lie. 

            Maggie looked at her skeptically, but she didn’t say anything.

            “Thanks,” Beth said, reaching out and taking the box from Maggie and putting it in her bag. 

            Beth quickly turned on her heel and walked away.  Her heart was racing.  Her mind was trying to pinpoint the last time she had been on her period, trying to figure out how long it had been.  And with each passing second, her stomach dropped lower and lower.

            Beth spent the rest of the day in complete silence.  They had set up camp later that afternoon in the woods just off of the road.  She had sat by the fire while Daryl cooked the squirrels he had managed to shoot. She sat by the fire, staring blankly as everyone ate but she didn’t.  She couldn’t. She felt sick to her stomach, her nerves not having settled down since the grocery store.

            “Hey, Beth, think we can go have a talk,” Maggie asked, squatting down next to Beth and gently placing a hand on her shoulder.

            Beth looked at Maggie. 

            “C’mon,” Maggie said softly, taking Beth’s hand and carefully pulling her to her feet.

            Beth would have protested, she should have protested, but she was too lost in her own thoughts.  She let Maggie guide her to a spot not far from their camp, a secluded area where nobody would be able to hear what they were talking about.

            “You wanna tell me what happened back there?” Maggie asked quietly.

            “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Beth mumbled, even though she knew exactly what Maggie was asking.

            “Back at the convenience store, when I gave you the tampons…something happened…”     

            “It was nothing.”

            “Beth…”

            Beth kept her head down, watching her boot as her foot lightly pushed a leaf.

            “Did something happen to you, Beth?” Maggie asked quietly. “Did someone touch you?”

            “Let’s just say that I was a virgin before we had to leave the prison, I was still a virgin when I was with Daryl…but now I’m not,” Beth whispered, her voice shaking.

            Beth could feel Maggie’s eyes on her, but she refused to look at her. She didn’t want to see the solemn expression that she knew was painted onto her sister’s face. She didn’t want Maggie’s pity; she didn’t want anyone’s pity.  And in this moment she was reminded that she had been right. This was the first of thousands of secrets that would be revealed.  And she knew that it was only a matter of time before the whole group knew the secret that she had just told Maggie.  The first hint of her darkness was beginning to seep out of her and soon the whole group would be able to see it. 

            “Did he…” Maggie trailed off, taking a shaky breath.  “Did he use protection?”

            Beth wanted to scoff at Maggie’s question.  He?  Did he use protection? She wanted to correct Maggie and tell her that it was more than just one man.  She wanted to tell her that her body had been an object, a toy, for many men, dozens of times.  But she didn’t say anything, because maybe she could keep that part of her story a secret. It was a small part, but it was something, something that hopefully only Beth would ever know.

            “No,” Beth whispered, her eyes glued to her feet.

            There was a long pause.  Beth assumed that Maggie was processing this new information.  She was probably trying to think of what to say. Because while Maggie may have had the right words for Beth back at the farm or even at the prison, she definitely didn’t have the right words for Beth now.

            “Okay,” Maggie finally said.  “We’ll just take this day by day.  The next time we come across a pharmacy or convenience store we’ll get you a pregnancy test.”

            That immediately caught Beth’s attention and she quickly snapped her head up to look at Maggie, her eyes wide.

            “No,” she said quickly, her voice louder than she intended.

            “Beth…” she trailed off again.  “We need to know…”

            “No,” Beth said again.  “ _We_ don’t need to do anything.  _We_ are not getting a pregnancy test.”

            “Okay. Then you can get one for yourself…I can just look for something else while you’re getting one.”

            “You don’t get it.  I’m not getting a damn pregnancy test, Maggie!”

            “Beth…you need to know.  We need to know what we’re dealing with.  I-if you are pregnant, we need to know so that we can get what we need.”

            Beth let out a long, loud, exasperated sigh of frustration. “No.”

            “Beth…”

            “I’m not getting one, Maggie.  Because if I get one, even if I go alone, everyone will find out,” Beth said, her eyes starting to fill with tears, causing her to quickly turn her head away from Maggie in the hopes that she wouldn’t see.  “And if everyone finds out that I got a stupid pregnancy test, they’ll start to ask questions, and they’ll find out the truth.”

            Beth brought her hand to her eyes and quickly wiped the tears away. She risked a glance at Maggie out of the corner of her eye.  She was wearing that same solemn expression that she had been before, the one that Beth didn’t want to see.

            “And I didn’t even want you to know.  And you really don’t even know the beginning of it.  So we’re not getting a pregnancy test.” 

            Maggie brought her hand to Beth’s chin, gently bringing Beth’s face to look at her. She didn’t say anything for a few moments.  She just looked at Beth. Her eyes were brimming with tears, but Maggie wasn’t letting them fall.

            “Okay,” Maggie said, her voice barely above a whisper.  “Okay,” she said again, nodding.  “We won’t get a pregnancy test.  We’ll deal with it, okay?  Whatever happens, we’ll deal with it, just like Daddy always told us to do,” Maggie promised, her finger lightly stroking Beth’s cheek in an attempt to comfort her.

            Beth closed her eyes, her breathing stuttered from her crying.

            “We’re gonna deal with it, Beth.  Everything’s gonna be okay.  I promise you,” Maggie said shakily.

            Beth knew that Maggie was using all of her strength to keep herself from crying.  She was trying to be strong for Beth, because in this moment Beth felt shattered.

            “How about we go back there and you get something to eat, and then I’ll set out your blankets and you can go to sleep.  Does that sound good?”

            Beth nodded, opening her eyes again.

            “Don’t tell anyone.”

            “I won’t,” Maggie whispered, pulling her hand away from Beth’s cheek. “I’m not gonna tell anyone.”

            And Beth took comfort in her sister’s promise.  She took comfort in a promise that she knew would be broken. She knew that her secret would slip from one of their lips.  She knew that there was a chance that someone else had heard her confession. But she held on to the promise that for now the only people who would know about what happened to her was herself and Maggie.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So this is a pretty long chapter, which is always exciting! And to be honest, this chapter was originally much longer, but I took a few parts out because I felt as if they didn't fit, and some felt like they belong in later chapters.
> 
> I realize that this chapter may disappoint a few of my readers for two reasons. 1) A lot of the reviews from last chapter mentioned being excited to hear Beth tell Daryl what happened to her. But that doesn't happen in this chapter. In fact, Beth is pushing Daryl away. Beth hasn't said a word to him for over a week. She didn't answer his question about what happened to her after he told her to run, but she keeps dreaming about it. 2) I think that most of my reader's were under the impression, or at least hoping/expecting that Beth would open up to Daryl and tell him what happened to her before she told Maggie. But in this chapter Beth ends up telling Maggie in a round-about way that she was raped. She doesn't go in to any detail about it, and she never comes out and directly says that she was raped, but she knows that Maggie knows the truth. Why did I do this? Maggie is Beth's sister, and I find it only natural that Maggie would be the first to know, whether Beth wanted her to or not. And maybe Maggie would have never found out, maybe Beth would have never told her, but they were at that grocery store, and that box of tampons brought it all on.
> 
> I also realize that this chapter may get some negative reviews. Beth has already been through so much, and now I'm throwing in the chance of a pregnancy. But I'm trying to keep this story realistic. Chances are that during a zombie apocalypse men as bad as the men that kidnapped Beth wouldn't care if they used protection. So there is a chance that Beth could be pregnant, but there is also the chance that she isn't.
> 
> Please leave a review and tell me what you think!


	10. Chapter 10

Ch.10

            He was pulled from his sleep by the sound of screaming. High pitched screams of fear. Screams that had been his alarm clock for the last three days; and he was standing up before his mind even registered what he was doing.

            He knew what it was, who it was.  It was Beth.  She’d been waking him up the same way ever since she had disappeared into the woods with Maggie three days ago.  He didn’t know where they had went, but they had been gone for almost an hour before they had returned.

            Rubbing his eyes briefly to clear his vision, he stood up and walked over to Beth, who was buried under a mound of blankets.  Her screaming was getting louder, and by now, nearly everyone was awake.  He reached an arm out and gently shook her by the shoulder.  She needed to wake up before the noise drew the attention of any nearby walkers.

            “Beth,” He mumbled.  “Hey, wake up girl.”

            Beth’s screams died down and she opened her eyes, her breathing ragged. She looked at him for a second before slowly sitting up, covering her face with her hands in an attempt to calm herself down.  He could see sweat on her forehead and chest, though he didn’t know if it was from all of the blankets Maggie had forced on her or because of the fear caused by whatever dream she had just had.

            Daryl stayed by her side.  He knew what was coming next.  And as if on cue, Beth shot up from her sitting position on the ground and darted to the nearest bush. Daryl followed close behind her, wrapping an arm around her waist to support her as she vomited the contents of her stomach onto the ground near her feet, his other hand lightly holding her hair out of her face.

            This had been his morning routine for the last three days. Beth’s screams waking him up, waking everyone up.  Beth running to a bush or a tree to vomit.  Beth pushing him away from her and going back to her spot.  But today was different, Beth wasn’t pushing him away, she was allowing him to hold her, and one look at her told him why.  She was exhausted.  She hadn’t gotten a good night sleep in days, and he knew that she had nothing left in her stomach.

            ”Damn girl, you sick or somethin’?  You’ve been throwin’ up your dinner the last three mornings,” he said quietly, keeping his arm wrapped tightly around her waist.

            Beth didn’t answer him, and after a few more moments, when he was sure that she wasn’t going to vomit again, he loosened his grip on her and let her hair fall back into her face.

            “How about you go back and sit down,” he suggested softly. “I’ll warm you up a can of soup, maybe you’ll be able to keep that down.”

            Beth nodded, turning her head slightly to look at him. Her eyes, which had dark circles beneath them, were pooling with tears.  She grabbed the arm that was around her waist and pushed it away from her, allowing her the freedom to move away from him.  She looked at him for a moment before walking past him, back to her spot.

            Daryl watched her walk away, sighing to himself.  She still wasn’t talking to him, but at least she was allowing him to help her.  He realized now that he had made a mistake by asking what had happened after she had fled the funeral home.  He knew that he shouldn’t have pushed her, but he needed to know, the unknown was killing him, eating at him.

            Daryl walked up behind Beth, reaching down and grabbing one of the blankets and lightly wrapping it around her shoulders.  She didn’t move, didn’t even acknowledge that he was there. He shook his head and walked over to the fire, taking his bag with him.

            “We got any soup left?” he mumbled, glancing at Rick when he couldn’t find any in his bag.

            “Don’t know.  Why?”

            “Beth. She needs to eat, figured that she might be able to keep soup down.”

            Rick nodded and began to rummage through his bag, casting an occasional glance at Beth.

            “Has she talked to you yet, or is she still giving you the silent treatment?”

            “Silent treatment.”

            “Just give her some time,” Rick said, tossing him a can of soup. “She’s been through a lot. I’ve seen things like this, back before the dead started walking the earth.  Girls becoming victims of some horrible crime.  Sometimes it took them awhile to talk about it, sometimes they shut themselves out to everyone else…it’s just a way of healing.”

            Daryl nodded, using his knife to cut the top off of the can. He placed the can over the fire, beginning to warm it up.  Looking over at Beth, he saw that Carol was by her, kneeling down in front of her, talking to her. He was too far away to hear what they were talking about, but Beth didn’t look happy, she seemed a little distressed and annoyed.  When Carol stood up and walked to the fire, sitting down next to him, he saw why; Carol had given Judith to Beth.

            “Think that’s a good idea?” Daryl asked, taking a quick look over at Carol.

            Carol shrugged her shoulders.  “I dunno,” Carol said with a sigh.  “I’m just trying to ease her back into the group, y’know?  Make her feel like she’s still needed, like we don’t see her any differently.”

            Daryl nodded.  “How’d you get her to take Judith?  She hasn’t even looked at the kid since we found her…”

            “I sort of forced Judith on her.  Told her that I had a few things to do.”

            Daryl sighed, shaking his head.

            “Judith’s missed her,” Carol said sadly.

            “I know that she has, girl’s practically been Judith’s mom.”

            “She got sick again this morning, didn’t she?” Carol asked after a few minutes of silence.

            “Yeah.”

            ”Almost seems like the morning sickness I got when I was pregnant with Sophia,” Carol said, glancing over at Beth.

            “It ain’t no morning sickness,” Daryl said curtly.  “Gotta be pregnant to have morning sickness, and the girl ain’t pregnant.”

            It couldn’t be morning sickness.  Beth wasn’t pregnant.  She couldn’t be pregnant.

            “It’s just what it seems like,” Carol said quietly.  “But it could be something different…food poisoning, dehydration, anything really.”

            “You think she’s pregnant?” Daryl asked, looking over at Carol.

            “I didn’t say that, Daryl.  All I said is that it seems like morning sickness.”

            “Do you think she’s pregnant?”

            Carol sighed sadly.  “I don’t know. W-we don’t know what happened to her, Daryl, but I’m pretty sure we’re all thinking the same thing. The ligature marks on her wrists, all the cuts and bruises she had, the way she flinches away from people sometimes, the dreams.  Anything could’ve happened to her.  But honestly, why would someone kidnap a teenage girl in the middle of an apocalypse? People were bad before all of this started, Daryl, but since the dead started walking they’ve gotten even worse. You don’t have to think too long to come up with a reason why a man would take a young woman…” Carol trailed off.

            Daryl kept his gaze on the fire, processing everything that Carol was saying. She was right. It didn’t take him long to come up with a reason why someone would take Beth.  The bruises, the marks, the cuts, the dreams, her fear…he knew what it all added up to, but he still couldn’t bring himself to accept it.  He wouldn’t allow himself to believe that a man had forced himself on Beth until Beth came out and told him that that was what happened.

            Daryl’s gaze immediately shifted from the fire and to Beth when Judith’s loud wails began to echo throughout the camp.  He was half expecting Beth to start rocking Judith in her arms. He was expecting that the soft singing voice that had filled the parlor room at funeral home would slowly waft over to him.  Hell, he wanted those things to happen.  He wanted to see that gentleness that he associated with Beth, wanted to see the smile that had always crossed her lips at the prison whenever she looked down at the child in her arms. But none of that happened.

            Instead, Beth just sat there, completely emotionless.    Judith was resting in her arms, her little hands and feet kicking and sprawling because she was upset.  Beth didn’t even look down at the baby when Judith began to tug at Beth’s long, blond hair.

            “Think you should go get Judith now…”

            “I know,” Carol said, standing up.  “It was worth a try,” she mumbled, walking away and over to Beth.

            Daryl returned his attention to the can of soup.  He listened as Judith’s cries began to die down until the baby was completely silent.  After a few more minutes, he removed the can from the fire and walked over to Beth, carefully handing it to her.

            “Careful, it’s hot,” he said quietly, sitting down beside her.

            Beth nodded and took the spoon that Daryl was holding out to her.

            “Sorry for askin’ ya’ to talk about it.  I shouldn’tve done that…”

            Beth shrugged her shoulders, taking a small bite of the soup, scrunching her face up when she realized that the soup was still too hot to eat.

            Daryl sighed, starting to become frustrated.  All he wanted was for Beth to talk to him, to say something, anything, if she was just yelling at him.  He couldn’t take the silence.

            “Look, Beth…you don’t gotta tell me what happened; hell, you don’t have to tell anyone what happened.  If you want to keep what happened to you to yourself, go right ahead and do that, that’s your choice, your decision.  But don’t ignore people, don’t shut me out,” he practically begged.

            He kept looking at her, but she wasn’t looking at him. She brought the spoon to her lips and lightly blew, causing the steam from the hot soup to blow away from her face.

            “I don’t care if you’re not the same girl that was at the funeral home, Beth. I don’t care how much you’ve changed. We’ve all changed. I’m not the same man that I was before, I’ve changed, fuck, I changed the most because of you…after that moonshine cabin, the fight, burning it down…” he trailed off, his mind flooding with memories of that day.

            He had been so mean to her, cruel even.  He had been trying to take away her hope that their family was alive just because he had no hope himself.  He hadn’t realized how determined the girl was until she left him and went off on her own.  And sure, he had thought about just letting her go, not following her, because at the time he hated the idea of being stuck with the blond girl who liked to sing and seemed to have no sense of reality.  But he had been wrong. Beth was set more in reality than any other person in the group.  She had a hope that kept her going, that ended up keeping him going. If it hadn’t been for her changing his mind, her determination to make him see that there is still good in the world and that it doesn’t help to have hope, he didn’t think he would have made it this far.

            His shook his head slightly, pushing the memories away when he saw Beth set the can of soup down.  She started folding up her blankets and putting them in one of her bags.  He noticed that she still had the black bag that he had kept for her, but he also knew that she hadn’t looked at it. 

            “You changed for the better, I’ve changed for the worse,” she said quietly, standing up and slinging the black bag on her shoulder.

            She reached down to grab her bag stuffed full of blankets and other supplies, but he grabbed it before she could.  Her eyes immediately met his, and he held her stare.

            “I got it.  Take your soup, eat it as we walk,” he murmured, standing up.  “And I don’t believe that you’ve changed for the worse…if you have, I haven’t seen it yet,” he said, walking away from her.

            They had been walking for hours, taking the occasional break for someone to run off behind a tree to go to the bathroom or for someone to stop and stretch out the cramps in their legs.  He was walking next to Michonne, Maggie and Beth behind him, bringing up the rear of the group.  Michonne was talking to him, but he was only half paying attention, his focus was on the hushed whispers of the two Greene sisters behind him.

            They had been whispering to each other on and off all day. Their voices were low, low enough so that only they could make out what the other was saying. Whatever it was they were talking about, they didn’t want anyone else to know, it was meant to be a secret. Occasionally the whispers would become heated, as if they were arguing about something, and then suddenly the argument would come to a complete halt, causing Daryl to look over his shoulder at them. Beth would be looking down, her bottom lip quivering despite her attempt to stop it by biting on it lightly. Maggie would be looking at her sister worriedly, a sadness in her eyes that he had only ever seen twice before; the first time was back at the farm, after Beth had tried to end her life, the second time was after Beth had run onto that road and collapsed in front of them.

            The group had to stop when Judith began to cry.  She was hungry and needed to be fed.  Thankfully they had managed to find baby food and Judith was now starting to get her first teeth, which meant that pretty soon she would be able to eat solid foods.  Rick helped Carol feed the baby, while everyone else took the time to relax.

            Daryl leaned up against one of the abandoned cars on the road, his eyes fixated on Maggie and Beth.  Maggie was trying to get Beth to eat a granola bar, but Beth kept handing it back to Maggie. After a few minutes, Beth let out a loud sigh of exasperation, rolling her eyes before walking away from Maggie. Something was going on between the two of them.

            After Judith had been fed and was situated in the makeshift-carrying device Carol had assembled, the group started walking again.  Beth was now walking towards the head of the group, next to Abraham.  Daryl figured that this was Beth’s way of getting away from Maggie for a little while and allowed her the chance to be completely quiet, consumed in her own thoughts. Daryl on the other hand, was walking next to Maggie.

            “Everything okay?” he asked quietly.

            “No, not really,” she whispered, her voice wavering.

            “Is it Beth?”

            “Yeah…”

            “Wanna talk about it?”

            Maggie sighed, nodding.  “I want to, but I can’t.”

            “Whaddya mean?”

            “I shouldn’t be talking about this.  I’ve already said too much.”

            Daryl had no idea what that was supposed to mean.  All that Maggie had said was that something was going on with Beth, but she hadn’t said what it was.  So Daryl spent the rest of the afternoon contemplating what could be wrong. Maybe Beth had confided in Maggie, told her what had happened, or maybe Beth was just refusing to listen to Maggie. He didn’t know.

            “I’mma go hunt,” Daryl muttered after they had made camp for the night. “Need some protein.”

            He grabbed his bow and trekked further into the woods, away from their campsite.  He was tired of eating canned fruits and vegetables, he wanted some meat, they all needed the meat. Thankfully the woods were teaming with life, and within an hour he had managed to kill eight squirrels and two rabbits.

            By the time he made it back to camp, nearly everyone was sleeping. Beth was huddled in her pile of blankets, Maggie sitting beside her, gently stroking Beth’s hair in a comforting manner. The only other person awake besides him and Maggie was Glenn, who was taking first watch.

            Daryl tossed the skinned animals down next to the fire. Carol or someone else would cook the meat when they woke up, most likely when they were on watch. He set his crossbow down and laid down on the ground, using his bag as a pillow. 

            Before he knew it he was being woken up by the familiar screams. He didn’t remember falling asleep, and by the look of the dark sky with the moon still in it, he hadn’t been sleeping for more than a few hours.  Groaning as he stood up, he walked over to Beth.

            “Beth. It’s just a dream. You gotta wake up,” he whispered softly, nudging Beth’s shoulder with his hand.

            He looked around the camp to see that everyone else was starting to wake up. Rosita and Tara were on watch, their attention immediately being drawn to Beth, who was still screaming. Her hands were grasping the blankets tightly.

            “Beth. Hey.  Snap out of it, girl,” he said a little louder, shaking her a little more forcefully this time.

            Beth’s eyes shot open, a breathless gasp escaping her lips. She stood up quickly, throwing the blankets off of her, and ran to a bush a few feet away.  Daryl followed on her heels, not hesitating to wrap his arm around her and hold her hair back as she vomited. 

            When she had finished spilling the contents of her stomach onto the forest floor, Daryl gently forced her away from the mess and coaxed her to sit on the ground.  She didn’t protest, and she didn’t move away from him when he sat down beside her, but he could tell that she wasn’t thrilled with his company.

            Daryl titled his head back so that he was looking up at the sky. Everything was beginning to make sense; the pieces were beginning to come together. Carol had to be right. Beth getting sick every morning, it had to be morning sickness.  Maggie and Beth’s whispering; Maggie knew.  He needed to ask her, needed to know, but there was a part of him that didn’t want to know.

            Daryl looked down at his hands, absentmindedly picking at the dirt underneath his nails.  He turned and looked at Beth, opening his mouth to say something, but then immediately stopping himself. He didn’t know what to say. He didn’t know how to ask her. He looked back to his hands when Beth wiped her mouth with the back of her hand.

            “Are you pregnant?” he asked, his voice barely audible even to his own ears, turning his head slightly to look at her.

            Daryl saw the way her expression changed from one of annoyance to one devoid of emotion.  She slowly turned and looked at him, and the first signs of her reaction were flashing across her face. She looked hurt, betrayed. And he saw the tears brimming in her eyes, the ones she was fighting to hold back.

            “Sh-she told you?” Beth asked quietly, her voice breaking.

            “Who?”

            “M-Maggie told you.  She promised me that she wouldn’t tell anyone,” Beth said, and Daryl knew that she was talking more to herself than to him.

            “I-it’s true, isn’t it?  You’re pregnant…”

            When Beth didn’t answer him, he took her silence as a yes. He looked away from her and to his hands, tightly clenching them into fists.  Regret, anger, guilt was swelling up inside of him.

            “Dammit, Beth,” he said quietly.  “I-I’m so sorry.  This is all my fault.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Beth's been having dreams. Beth's been getting sick. Daryl's been putting the pieces together. And BOOM! He thinks he's found the answer. And now he's blaming himself. But, just remember, Beth hasn't admitted that she's pregnant, but she also hasn't denied it. This chapter is from Daryl's POV, so this is just his conclusion of what's going on, but we still don't have a definitive answer as to whether to not Beth is pregnant.
> 
> Also, just a fair warning, the next few chapters are going to be a tidal wave of emotions. I am really excited for them! I have them all planned out, and now I just have to write them. But I must warn you, updates may be a little slow because midterms are just around the corner, which means a lot of papers, tests, and homework.
> 
> Please leave a review and tell me what you think!


	11. Chapter 11

Ch.11

            “Are you pregnant?” Daryl asked.

            Beth’s stomach dropped at his words.  She had barely been able to hear him; his voice so low and quiet that she would’ve missed his question had the woods not have been so silent. And all she could feel at the moment was betrayal. 

            “Sh-she told you?” she asked, turning slightly so that she was looking at Daryl.

            “Who?” Daryl asked confusedly.

            “M-Maggie told you.  She promised me that she wouldn’t tell anyone,” and Beth wasn’t sure whether she was saying this to Daryl or to herself.

            She had known that this was going to happen.  She knew the moment that Maggie had promised her that she wouldn’t tell anyone about her possible pregnancy that the promise would be broken. She had been preparing herself for it, but there had been a part of her that was holding onto the hope that Maggie would be able to keep her secret.

            “I-it’s true, isn’t it?  You’re pregnant…”

            And Beth didn’t answer him.  She was too caught up in her own thoughts and emotions to form an answer. Even if she had been able to answer him, she wouldn’t know what to say, because she didn’t know the answer.

            “Dammit, Beth.  I-I’m so sorry. This is all my fault.”

            And she knew that she should’ve said something to him, but she didn’t. Instead, she quickly stood up and walked back to the camp, leaving Daryl sitting on the forest floor. She could feel the tears swelling in her eyes, but she pushed them back.  She knew what she had to do.  She only had one option now.

            She knelt down on her pile of blankets and began throwing her few belongings into her bag.  She took one of the blankets and folded it up, stuffing it into the bag along with everything else. She was vaguely aware of the crunching of leaves as Daryl walked past her.

            “Beth, what’re you doing?” Maggie asked softly, walking towards her.

            “You told him?” Beth asked, throwing a few more things into her bag without really even seeing what they were.

            “Told who what?”  
            “Told Daryl, Maggie!” Beth said loudly.  “Told him that I could be pregnant!”

            She glanced up and saw that everyone was looking at her. Now instead of just her, Maggie, and Daryl knowing, everyone knew. 

            “She didn’t tell me, Beth,” Daryl mumbled.

            “Then how the hell did you find out?!”

            “I told him that you seemed like you were having morning sickness,” Carol spoke up, taking a small step forward.

            Beth quickly stood up, slinging her backpack onto her back. She adjusted the straps before she started walking.

            “Where are you going?” Maggie asked worriedly.

            “I’m leaving.”

            “Beth. Don’t.”

            “I thought I could trust you, Maggie!  I-I told you, and I thought that I could trust you!”

            “I didn’t tell anyone, Beth.  I kept your secret.”

            Beth turned and looked at Maggie.  “Then how does he know?”

            “Carol,” Daryl said.  “We were just talkin’, Beth, just tryin’ to figure out why you were so sick.  Maggie didn’t tell me anything.”

            “I’m going.”

            “Beth. Stop.  Let’s just…lets just talk,” Maggie said, trying to reason with Beth, desperately trying to convince her to stay.

            “There’s nothing to talk about,” Beth said, turning and starting to walk again.

            “You know that’s not true.  You know that there’s a lot you haven’t told me.  And maybe talking about it will help.”

            Beth stopped walking again, turning to face her sister. “Oh, and like you really even care,” she said sarcastically.

            “Of course I care!” Maggie cried.  “You’re my sister.”

            Beth heard the desperation in Maggie’s voice, the way her voice wavered. She knew that Maggie cared; she knew that Maggie would always care about her, but only one image was flashing in her mind.

            “I saw the signs you left, telling Glenn to go to Terminus,” Beth said, her voice eerily calm despite the intense mixture of emotions she was feeling.

            “Beth,” Maggie said, just above a whisper.

            “Did you even worry about me, or did you just assume that I was dead?”

            “Beth, it’s not like that.”

            “Well guess what Maggie, I wasn’t dead.  I was just goin’ through hell, and all you could care about was getting back to him!”

            “Beth, I’m sorry.  I…I…I’m so sorry, Beth. I didn’t think you were dead. I should have been looking for you; I should have put your name on those signs.  But I didn’t, and I’m sorry.  But you need to talk about what happened to you.”

            “You do not get to tell me what I need to do.  You lost that right the moment those men took me and I escaped.”

            “Beth…”

            “I’m leaving,” she said, adjusting the straps on her backpack again.

            “No you’re not,” Maggie said hurriedly, taking a step towards Beth.

            Beth ignored Maggie and started walking away.

            “Beth, get back here!”

            Beth stopped walking and turned to look at Maggie.

            “Just talk to me,” Maggie begged, her voice soft and gentle. “Talk to me.  You can talk to me.  You can trust me.”

            “What do you want me to say, Maggie?!  You want me to come out and tell everyone that I could be pregnant? Huh?  Is that what you want?  Well guess what everyone, I could pregnant!” she yelled. 

            “Beth,” Maggie said quietly, shaking her head slightly.

            “Do you want to hear what happened?  That’s what you all want, isn’t it?  You’ve all just been waiting for the answers to your questions. Fine.  The car drove up and took me back to a cabin. I woke up in a dark room, hands tied, eyes blindfolded.  And they didn’t do anything the first few days.  No,” Beth said, laughing sadly.  “They just made me sit there, let me wonder what was going to happen to me. Didn’t take me long to find out. I think it was the fourth night when it first happened,” Beth said, nodding her head.  “Connor was the first to do it.  Walked into that room like what he was about to do wasn’t a big deal.  Untied my hands, took off the blindfold.  And I tried to run, I tried to get away, but I couldn’t.  It was so easy for him to hold me down, to take off my clothes. And I can still hear him laughing when I started to cry.  And it went on for what seemed like forever, and I kept fighting, and he eventually stopped. And I thought it was done, thought that it was over, but I was wrong.  Because you know what, Maggie, there were ten other men lined up outside the door, just waiting to have their turn with me.  And they did, they all got their turn with me.  Every single night.

            “So while you were snuggling up next to Glenn keeping warm, I was locked in a room waiting for the next man to come in and use me,” Beth said, her voice shaking heavily, her breathing stuttered.

            Nobody said anything.  The only noises that could be heard were the rustling of leaves in the light night wind and the crickets chirping.  And the realization hit Beth that she had just told everyone everything. Everyone knew what had happened to her.

            “I’m leaving,” Beth mumbled, turning and starting to walk away.         

            She had to leave.  She didn’t have a choice.  They knew now. They knew what had happened. They knew what she had let happen to her.  And if they didn’t believe that she had changed before, if they hadn’t seen the darkness within her, they would now, and Beth didn’t want to be there to see their reactions.

            As she walked away, she heard Maggie beginning to cry, her strangled sobs echoing throughout the woods.  She heard the hushed whispers of Glenn trying to comfort her.  And she heard the gruff, gravelly voice of Daryl. He was talking to Maggie, his voice heated, but he wasn’t mad at Maggie, and Beth couldn’t make out what he was saying.

            Beth broke through the tree line and stepped out onto the road. She was vaguely aware of the sound of footsteps behind her.  Someone was following her, but she wasn’t stopping to find out who it was.

            “Beth. Stop,” Daryl’s soft, rough voice called from behind her.

            But Beth ignored him. 

            “Beth, you can’t…you can’t just leave.  You can’t leave Maggie.  Glenn. Judith.  We tried so hard to get you back, we’re still tryin’ to get you back.  You can’t just leave,” he said, taking a deep breath before he continued.  “You can’t leave me, Beth,” he said, his voice breaking.

            Her steps faltered for a moment at Daryl’s words, but she continued to walk. She needed to leave, to go, to leave this family behind.  She could leave them. She had to leave them. She was doing what was best for all of them. She wasn’t a part of that family anymore.  She had been, back at the prison, before she was taken.  But now she could never be a part of that family.  She was too far gone, they just hadn’t seen that yet.

            “Beth, ya’ can’t leave me, girl.  I-I can’t lose you again.  I can’t take losing you again.  You can run, but I’m just gonna follow you.”

            Beth completely ignored him and kept walking, quickening her pace in an attempt to lose Daryl.  But he was keeping his word, he was still following her, quickening his pace just to keep up with Beth.

            “What do I have to say, Beth?  What do I have to do to convince you to come back?”

            Beth sighed in aggravation, stopping and turning to look at him, throwing her hands in the air angrily.  “What the hell do I have to do to make you stop following me?” she yelled. “What do I have to do to make you see that I’m protecting you, protecting everyone?”

            “You ain’t protecting no one by running off like this!”

            “You just don’t understand, do you?  None of you understand!  You’re all too blind to see the truth?”

            “The hell you talkin’ ‘bout?”

            “I’m not the girl that you all want back, Daryl.  I’m not the girl that you and Maggie and Rick and Carol and everyone else thinks that I am, the girl that you all remember.”

            “It don’t matter if you’re that girl or not.”

            “Yes it does!” Beth said, tilting her head up to look at the sky. “It does matter,” she whispered. “It matters.”

            “No it don’t.”

            Beth looked at Daryl again.  “Everyone changes, I get that.  But me, what I’ve changed into…I-I don’t even recognize myself, Daryl. And maybe you guys haven’t seen that person yet, not the full extent of it, of who I’ve become, but you will. Just give it time, because I can’t hold it back forever, Daryl.  The cracks are already forming.  Fuck, you saw some of it today, and back at that building we were at.”

            Beth stopped talking, waiting for Daryl to say something, but he didn’t, he just stood there looking at her, waiting for her to continue.

            “That hope that you clung to, that you saw in me…it’s not there anymore, Daryl. It’s gone.  Disappeared forever.  And when you found me on that road, I was ready to die.  I was ready to lay there and wait for a walker to get me or to starve, or whatever other horrible death could come to me. You know why?  Because this,” Beth said, motioning around her with her arms. “It’s all so pointless. Yeah, I saw hope in the world even after I saw my dad get killed.  I still had the hope that we would find everyone else.  And when I woke up in that room, I had the hope that you would find me…I _knew_ that you would find me. But now…now I don’t have hope for anything.  Sure, maybe you and _your_ family have a chance in this world, a chance to have hope and live happy lives.  But me?  It’s just better that I’m not with you guys.”

            “Beth, that’s not true.  We all need you, whether all your hope is gone or not.  I don’t really care.  We still need you. And it’s not _my_ family, it’s _our_ family. You’re a part of it no matter what.”

            Beth clenched her eyes shut tightly, beginning to grow more frustrated with every word that Daryl was saying.

            “I’m leaving, Daryl, and you can’t stop me.”

            “I ain’t letting you leave.  You wouldn’t let me give up after the prison, so I ain’t letting you leave.”

           “You don’t have a choice,” Beth said venomously.

            “Beth, do not turn around and start walking!” Daryl yelled when Beth started to turn her body slightly.

            Beth began to walk again.

            “Goddammit, Greene!  Stop!” he bellowed angrily.

            “What do you want from me, Daryl?  Why won’t you just let me leave?” Beth yelled, turning around again to look at him.

            Daryl just looked at her.

            Beth looked down and then back at Daryl, taking her backpack off and dropping it on the ground.  “Oh, sorry. Here, you can have this back,” Beth said angrily.

            She started to unbutton the buttons of her shirt, his shirt. She hadn’t taken it off since he had put it on her.  It was soft and warm, and smelt like him, and his scent was comforting to her when she would wake up from one of her nightmares.  But it was his shirt, and she was leaving; leaving him, leaving everyone behind.

            She undid the last button and threw the shirt at him. And she knew in that moment what she had just done.  She was standing there in front of him with nothing on but a bra, jeans, and shoes. That shirt had been hiding the things that Beth never wanted anyone to see.  And she saw the look on his face as he took in her appearance. Anger.  He was angry, but not at her.  He was angry at what he was seeing.

            Blood was smeared across her torso.  Blood that hadn’t been washed off yet because Daryl hadn’t dared wash anything other than her arms and face when he had found her.  But it wasn’t just blood.  The blood covering her skin was mixed with the telltale sign of what had happened to her, the substance of her captors’ release.

            And beneath the blood and semen there was an array of bruises. Bruises that had just begun to turn yellow.  Bruises that showed where her captors had grabbed her too roughly, where they had kicked her when she didn’t comply with their orders.  And there were bite marks, marks from when her captors found their release and muffled their cries of pleasure into her flesh.

            But the worse part was the scars.  All of the other things would go away.  The blood and semen could be washed away, the bruises would fade. But the scars, they were there forever, constant reminders of what had happened to her.  They littered her skin, some big, others small. Before she had been taken, the only scar she had was the one on her wrist, the one that had been the result of her actions.  But these scars weren’t like that; these scars were because of what they had done to her.

            She watched Daryl’s face, his eyes focused on the long, jagged cuts across her lower stomach.  Some of them weren’t healed yet, some of them weren’t even scabbed over, some of them were already scars.  She knew that he knew what they were from.  They were from a knife, a knife that had been held against her skin to keep her compliant as a man forced himself on her.

            She didn’t know how long they stood there like that. Beth was completely frozen by Daryl’s stare.  His eyes were roaming her body, taking in every single last cut, bruise, scar, mark, taking in the blood and other bodily fluids dried to her skin.  And she was fighting back tears.

            Daryl took a few steps forward, closing the short distance between them, and roughly grabbed her arm, starting to pull her behind him. “We’re goin’ back and getting ya’ cleaned up.”

            “Let go of me!” Beth yelled, trying to pull her arm free.

            His grip on her arm tightened and Beth began to panic. Suddenly it wasn’t Daryl who was dragging her; it wasn’t Daryl who had ahold of her.  It was Martin.  It was Connor.  It was all of the men who had touched her, who had taken her away from Daryl.  And she did the only thing she could think of.

            Her mind and body kicked into survival mode, the mode she had been in for so long, the mode she had to be in to survive what had happened to her. Before she even knew what she was doing, she had her hand on her knife, unsheathing it in one quick motion. She swung the knife blindly, her tears blurring her vision as they began to stream down her face.

            She heard a grunt, and the hand around her arm immediately loosened, giving her the opportunity to pull it free of the person’s grasp. She took a step back, trying to calm herself down, trying to make sense of what was happening.

            “Beth,” someone called out to her softly.

            The voice was familiar.  It was soft and gentle.  It wasn’t the voice of any of her captor’s.  It wasn’t menacing. This person didn’t want to hurt her. It was Daryl.

            “Beth, girl, I ain’t gonna hurt you.”

            Beth’s vision cleared enough for her to make out Daryl standing in front of her, his hands raised in the air slightly to show her that he meant no harm. Blood was trailing down his arm. It wasn’t a lot, but it was enough for her to know that she had hurt him.

            Daryl took a small step towards her, keeping his hands raised. “I ain’t gonna hurt you, Beth. Okay?” he asked calmly. “I-I just need to get you back to our camp. Alright?” he asked as he reached out and grabbed her arm again, this time more gently.

            Beth’s hand clutched tightly around her knife, her breath catching in her throat. But she let him pull her back, leaving his shirt and her bag lying on the deserted road.  If she would have been thinking clearly, she would have protested, she would have at least made him stop so that she could put a shirt on, but she didn’t.  And she regretted it.

            As soon as they got back to camp, everyone turned to look at them, and as soon as they saw Beth, none of their eyes left her.  They were all looking at her appearance, at the injuries they hadn’t seen, at the skin that had remained unwashed.  And it was silent, nobody was talking, everyone too in shock to form any words.

            Beth didn’t fight Daryl when he placed his hands on her shoulders, forcing her to sit down near the fire.  She didn’t fight him when he warmed up water and began to wash her abdomen, but his hands didn’t stray any further than that. 

            “Maggie?” Beth heard him call.  “C-can you get the rest of her?” he asked quietly, trying to keep his voice from shaking.

            Maggie slowly walked over and knelt down next to Beth, taking the wet cloth from Daryl.  She looked at Beth for a long moment, hesitating before she brought the cloth back to the Beth’s skin, cleaning her chest and lower stomach.  Beth was staring at the fire, but she saw the tears rolling down Maggie’s cheeks.

            After Maggie finished cleaning the rest of her body, she waved Bob over. Beth knew that she had wounds that weren’t done healing yet.  She knew that she had bruises that were still black and blue.  But she didn’t want anyone to look at her, to touch her.

            “Beth,” Bob said gently.  “I just need to get you cleaned up, take a look at your injuries,” he said, sitting down in front of her.

            “No,” Beth said bluntly.

            “Beth, you have some injuries that are worrisome.  Just let me take a quick look at them, make sure they’re healing properly.”

            “No,” Beth said again, tearing her gaze away from the fire and looking at Bob. “Nobody is touching me anymore. You want to clean me up? Fine.  But I’m done being touched.  Just get me damn shirt.”

            “We don’t want anything to get infected, Beth.”

            “Get me a fucking shirt,” Beth said, doing her best to stay calm.

            Maggie sighed and stood up, walking over to her bag and pulling out one of her sweatshirts.  She walked back over to Beth and handed it to her.  Beth quickly put it on, her body immediately relaxing as her body was covered, hiding the scars and other injuries.

            Everyone was still quiet.  Nobody had said anything since they had gotten back.  But they were staring, their eyes glued to Beth, and Beth could feel the intensity of their stares.  Sure, everyone was quiet, but the silence and the staring were drowning her, the unasked questions were hanging heavily in the air.

            “You all want to know what happened?” she asked angrily.

            “Beth. Stop,” Maggie said quietly.

            “No. You’re all so curious. You’ve all seen what I look like, what I’m like now.  Might as well get the whole story.  So come on, gather ‘round the fire and we can share stories.  Maggie, you can tell us all about your determination to find Glenn. And Daryl, why don’t you tell them about that night I got taken…I’d like to hear what happened after that. And I’ll tell you all what happened to me.  It will be like the old times, Maggie, when we sat around outside by the bonfire and told ghost stories. The only difference will be that these horror stories are real.”

            “Beth! Stop,” Maggie growled through clenched teeth.

            And Beth broke in that moment, the weight of everything crashing down at her all at once.  The tears flooded her eyes and spilled down her face, her body shook with her sobs. And Maggie was at her side in an instant, pulling her close to her, holding her tightly as she rocked her back and forth, trying to calm her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So a lot happens in this chapter. Beth immediately assumes that Maggie told Daryl about her possible pregnancy, and it's sort of like the last straw for Beth. She had been talked into staying once before, but now she feels as if she needs to leave, she feels like she doesn't have a choice. But Maggie isn't willing to let her go, she can't lose her sister again. And that just opens a whole new box of worms...the signs Maggie left for Glenn. If you remember in Ch.1, Beth comes across one of the signs, but she doesn't really have any reaction to it. But now we get to see how she really felt about it, how much it affected her. 
> 
> Another huge thing that happened in this chapter was Daryl following her and Beth getting so angry and frustrated that she takes off her shirt (which is really Daryl's shirt), revealing all of the injuries she had been hiding. The shirt was, in a way, covering her horror story, but now it's completely out in the open. Seeing this causes Daryl to become angry, and he reacts in a way that he probably shouldn't have, grabbing Beth roughly, causing Beth to act out and draw her knife on him. And then she goes back to the camp, and now everyone has seen what she's been hiding.
> 
> I am super excited for Ch.12...it's going to be from Daryl's POV! And then Ch.13 will most likely be from Maggie's POV, because I feel that Maggie's perspective is extremely important.
> 
> Please leave a review and let me know what you think!


	12. Chapter 12

Ch.12

_He saw the way Maggie’s eyes scanned the bodies in the train car, looking for one face, one familiar mop of blond hair that Daryl knew wasn’t there.  He wasn’t sure how long they had been there, it had to have been at least a day, and she still hadn’t asked about Beth.  But he didn’t miss the way her eyes would search around in the dark, as if maybe she had missed it, as if her eyes had overlooked the blond and she was hiding in the corner somewhere._

_“She ain’t here,” he mumbled quietly from where he was sitting, his back pressed firmly against the hard wall of the train car._

_Maggie’s eyes stopped their search and immediately looked at him, asking him if he had said something. He knew that he had to tell her, but he had been avoiding this moment, the moment when everyone would find out what had happened.  So far, Rick was the only one who knew, and even then, he had only told Rick half of the truth. All Rick knew was that Beth was gone._

_“She ain’t here,” he repeated gruffly._

_“I-I know she isn’t,” Maggie said quietly.  “Did anyone see her? Does anyone know if she made it out of the prison?”_

_And he knew that Rick was looking at him now, he could feel his eyes on him, the intensity of his stare almost unbearable.  Daryl kept his eyes glued to the ground.  He had been reliving that night since it had happened.  Running out of the funeral home, seeing Beth’s bag on the ground, the car screeching away, kicking up dust in its wake.  And he had ran, he had ran as fast as he could until he couldn’t run anymore. He had lost her. He had failed her._

_“Daryl,” Rick said, his voice echoing off the walls._

_“You saw her?” Maggie asked quickly, sitting up a little straighter.  “Did she make it out?”_

_“Yeah. She made it,” Daryl replied vaguely._

_“Where is she? Who did she get out with?”_

_“Got out with me,” he said, keeping his eyes glued to the ground._

_“Sh-she got out with you?” Maggie whispered.  “If she got out with you, then where is she?” she asked, her voice wavering._

_Everyone was looking at him now.  They were all waiting for his answer.  He knew what they were all thinking.  They were all expecting him to say that she became another victim of this world, that she kept surviving until she couldn’t, until a walker finally got her._

_“Don’t know where she is.”_

_“What do you mean you don’t know where she is?” Maggie asked, getting to her feet. “If you got out with her, then you have to know!”_

_“It means that I don’t know. Alright?  I don’t know where she is.”_

_“Is she…is she dead?”_

_Daryl shook his head no._

_“Then what happened to her?”_

_Daryl took a shaky breath. His eyes were burning with the tears that he was trying to hold back.  Sure, he had been through hell and back.  He had dealt with an abusive father, he had lived a shitty life, he had lost his brother, but none of those things hurt as much as losing Beth had hurt._

_The girl had annoyed the shit out of him at first.  Her hope, her belief that the rest of their family had made it out alive was the last thing that he had wanted to deal with after what had happened at the prison. Her persistence to look for them seemed like a waste of time to him, but he had known that he couldn’t just let her go out and search for them by herself._

_And then she had gotten the bright idea to have her first drink.  And he had seen her determination.  He had seen the fight in her.  And that’s when things had started to change.  But the fight at the moonshine cabin, when he had broken down, that was the last straw, that had burned the last bridge that was keeping him away from her, the last thing that was distancing him from her.  And after that things had been good, until he had lost her._

_“She was taken.”_

_“Taken? What do you mean taken?” Maggie asked._

_“Taken. Stolen.  Kidnapped.  Whatever the hell you wanna call it,” he answered gruffly, his voice gravelly._

_He heard Maggie’s feet shuffle against the rough floor as she took a step backwards. She was comprehending what he had just told her.  And he was waiting for her to punch him, to shove him against the wall and yell at him._

_“Tell me what happened. I-I need you tell me what happened,” she said softly, walking over and sitting down next to him._

_“You really wanna know everything?” he muttered quietly, still looking at the ground._

_“Everything. From the moment you two got out of the prison.  Tell me. I-I need to know.”_

_Daryl didn’t say anything for a moment, nervously picking at the dirt and blood underneath his finger nails.  He didn’t know where to start, what to tell her.  He turned his head, finally moving his eyes from the floor and glancing at Maggie before hesitantly starting to speak._

_“She ran out of the prison, saw me.  We got out together. Ran.  Made camp at night.  Damn girl was determined to find everyone, said that we couldn’t be the only survivors. We found some tracks and she made me follow them._

_“We didn’t say much to each other.  It was just surviving. That’s all we were doing, surviving. Living one day to the next. I’d hunt, she’d set up the next campsite, make the fire.  We barely said anythin’ to each other…I barely said anything to her.”_

_Daryl took a moment to glance around the dim train car.  Everyone had taken a few steps closer to him.  They were all listening, all wondering what had happened.  They were all waiting for him to continue. So he did._

_“Then one day she got fed up with it.  She was tired of the running and the silence…tired of me.  Decided she wanted to have her first drink,” he said with a chuckle, glancing at Maggie out of the corner of his eyes.  “Didn’t know your sister could be so stubborn and persistent. “_

_Maggie smiled weakly, nodding her head.  “Yeah…she has her moments,” she whispered sadly._

_“She kept running away from me, practically forced me to follow her.  We ended up finding a country club.  Fucking place was full of dead people…think they committed suicide or something. We eventually made it to the bar. Only drink left was Peach Schnapps. Told her that I wasn’t gonna let her first drink be Peach Schnapps.  If she’s gonna get drunk, she might as well do it right,” he chuckled._

_“I took her to the cabin that we found,” he said, nodding towards Michonne.  “The one in the woods.”_

_“The moonshiner’s cabin? Michonne asked, surprised._

_“Yeah. Got her a glass and filled it with moonshine.  Except she wanted to play some game…I Never or something like that,” he said, shaking his head. “So we played, but I was drunk, and the game made me mad.  I went off on her, said things that I shouldn’tve said.  Dragged her outside, yelled at her, told her that she would never see any of you guys again…but she yelled right back at me.  The girl knew exactly what to say._

_“By the time we both calmed down it was dark.  We were both drunk still. We went and sat out on the porch, we talked.  She told me about her family…Maggie, Glenn, Hershel…” he trailed off._

_“What happened next?” Maggie asked._

_“We burnt the place down. Used all of the moonshine and set the place on fire.  It was her idea, and I went along with it.  And things were good between us after that.  I started teaching her how to track and how to use m crossbow. But she ended up stepping in a trap, messed up her ankle._

_“We found a funeral home. The place was clean, stocked with food. We needed someplace to stay. Beth…she couldn’t walk on her ankle. She needed to rest, give it time to heal.  We were planning on staying there.  But there was this dog. It had come to the door earlier in the day.  We were sitting down eating dinner when we heard the cans rattling.  Thought it was the dog…I let my guard down._

_“Opened the door to a herd of walkers.  I yelled for Beth, yelled for her to run.  She didn’t want to leave me.  I told her to grab her bag, said that I would meet her at the road…promised her that I would meet her at the road.  I lead the walkers downstairs, gave Beth time to get out._

_“When I made it out to the road…” he trailed off, looking down and then looking at Maggie. “When I made it out to the road…she wasn’t there.  Her bag was on the ground. And there was a car. I chased it, Maggie. Chased the damn thing all night and into the next morning…”_

_The train car was completely silent.  He kept his eyes on Maggie, saw the tears brimming there.  Her bottom lip quivered the slightest before she forced it to stop._

_“Black car. White cross.  I tried to follow it.  I tried….”_

_“But she’s alive?”_

_“She’s alive.”_

* * *

 

            Daryl watched as Beth started to unbutton the shirt she was wearing, his shirt that she was wearing.  He shook his head. She was acting like he had never seen her act before.  He couldn’t understand why she wanted to leave so badly.  If she was pregnant, they would deal with it.  If she was changed, they would accept it.

            But his stomach dropped when the shirt fell to the ground, revealing Beth’s bare torso.  He knew that he shouldn’t have looked, that he should have looked away, but he couldn’t stop his eyes from roaming over her.  It wasn’t out of lust, either, it was horror.

            Blood was smeared across every inch of her.  Her blood.  And he could see the dried, white substance mixed in with it, and it made his stomach churn. And he saw the bite marks littering the crook of her shoulder and neck and the snow-white flesh that was peeking out of her bra.  And the bruises; deep blue and purple, some yellow, painted on her ribcage, her breasts, her hips.

            But his eyes stopped on her lower stomach.  They stopped on the straight lines marring her skin. The deep cuts. He knew what they were from. He knew that they were from the blade of a knife. 

            He closed his eyes, trying to calm the anger that was swelling inside of him, but all he could see was a bare, naked Beth lying on the ground. He saw a man over top of her, resting between her legs, a knife pressed firmly against her skin to keep her still. He saw him moving, could hear his moans mixed with her whimpers.  Saw his teeth sink into her flesh as he found his release.  And he knew now that the nightmare he had been hoping Beth hadn’t been in was real, he knew that even his worse scenario hadn’t compared to what Beth had actually gone through.

            He reopened his eyes and quickly walked towards her. Without thinking, he grabbed her arm, jerking her forward slightly as he began to walk.  He was mad, furious.  Anger was fueling his actions.  Anger at the man who had done this to Beth, at the man who had forced himself on her and left her feeling empty.  But as much as he was angry at the man who had hurt Beth, he was even more angry at himself for letting Beth go, for losing her, for not finding her in time.

            “We’re goin’ back and getting ya’ cleaned up,” he muttered angrily, his hand tightening around her arm.

            “Let go of me!” Beth yelled.

            He could hear the panic in her voice and could feel her struggling to get away from him, but he ignored it.  His head was in a fog, his actions clouded by his anger.  But then suddenly there was a sharp pain as the blade of a knife slid across his upper arm and he grunted in pain, immediately loosening his grip on Beth and turning to look at her.

            Her eyes were wide, her breathing ragged.  She took a step away from him, tears swelling in her eyes. He hands were shaking, and he swore that he could see her heartbeat on her neck.

            “Beth,” he said softly, trying to calm her down.  “Beth, girl, I ain’t gonna hurt you,” he said gently, raising his hands in the air, showing her that he had no weapons to harm her with.

            “I ain’t gonna hurt you, Beth.  Okay?” he asked softly, taking a step towards her, reaching a hand out and gently taking ahold of her arm again.  “I-I just need to get you back to our camp.  Alright?”

            He saw the way Beth’s hand tightened around the handle of her knife. She was still scared, but she let him pull her back to camp.  He was aware of the blood running down his arm, but he ignored it.  His focus was on Beth.  He needed to get her cleaned up.

            He didn’t realize until they made it back and everyone was staring at them that Beth was still in just her bra and jeans, nothing was covering her; nothing was keeping the others from seeing the horror story painted on her naked torso.  Placing his hands on her shoulders, he gently forced her to sit.

            He grabbed a pot and dumped bottles after bottle of water into it. He knew that they didn’t have an endless supply of water, but he didn’t care right now.  He wanted to get Beth cleaned, to get the memories of what had happened to her off of her.

            Grabbing a rag, he turned back to Beth and began to wipe the blood and other bodily fluids from her.  He wiped her stomach, back, shoulders, neck, but he refused to let his hands stray to her chest or lower stomach.  He refused to let his hands touch where those men had violated her.  He didn’t want to scare her, he didn’t want her to associate him with those men.

            “Maggie?” he called out, glancing at the eldest Greene daughter who had slowly made her way over to them when she had seen Beth’s appearance. “C-can you get the rest of her?” he asked, his voice shaking despite his attempt to hide it.

            Maggie reached out a shaking hand and took the bloody rag from him. He didn’t leave Beth’s side as Maggie dragged the rag over Beth’s skin.  He turned his head as Maggie hesitantly unclasped Beth’s bra, allowing her to fully clean Beth’s body.

            Out of the corner of his eye, he could see the tears rolling down Maggie’s cheeks, reflecting the light from the fire.  He could hear Beth’s quiet whimpers when the rag ran over a cut. He could hear the leaves shuffling under Beth as she backed away when Maggie’s hands reached the spots of her body that had been the object of abuse for those men.

            Maggie nudged his arm after a few minutes, letting him know that it was safe for him to look.  The blood and semen were gone, erased from Beth’s body, but it only made the cuts and bruises and scars stand out even more.  And he wasn’t surprised when Bob walked over carrying a first aid kit.  He also wasn’t surprised when Beth refused to let Bob look at her, demanding that somebody give her a shirt to put on.

            He didn’t know how long everyone just stood there or sat there, there eyes glued to Beth.  They were all looking at her, some as if she were a wounded animal, others with looks of complete horror on their faces, and some people’s faces were blank, not wanting to believe what they had seen.  He was still looking at her, sitting a few feet from her by the fire, and he knew that his face was one of the ones that was blank, still not wanting to believe what had happened to her, but not being able to deny it after having seen the proof on her body.

            “You all want to hear what happened?” Beth asked angrily, shaking Daryl from his thoughts.

            “Beth. Stop,” Maggie sighed.

            “No. You’re all so curious. You’ve all seen what I look like, what I’m like now.  Might as well get the whole story.  So come on, gather ‘round the fire and we can share stories.  Maggie, you can tell us all about your determination to find Glenn. And Daryl, why don’t you tell them about that night I got taken…I’d like to hear what happened after that,” she said, turning to look at Daryl.

            Daryl’s eyes met hers for the briefest second.  He saw the anger and the hurt in her.  He saw the tears that were starting to build. He knew that she was about to break, that she was about to shatter.

            “And I’ll tell you all what happened to me,” she continued. “It will be like the old times, Maggie, when we sat around outside by the bonfire and told ghost stories. The only difference will be that these horror stories are real.”

            “Beth! Stop,” Maggie growled through clenched teeth.

            And Daryl had been right, Beth had broken.  A strangled sob escaped her throat as the tears began to fall. Her body was shaking with her sobs, and Maggie was at her side faster than he had ever seen somebody move before. Her arms wrapped around Beth, pulling her close, holding her tightly, rocking her back and forth. And all Daryl could think was that this was all his fault.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So there's Ch.12. I really like this chapter because we get a Daryl flashback of him telling Maggie and everyone else what happened. And yes, I realize that the last half of the chapter is basically the ending of the last chapter, but I thought that it was important to get Daryl's POV on it. Him seeing what Beth has been hiding, what she looks like, it sort of makes reality come crashing down on him...it forces him to accept that all of the scenarios he had been coming up with in his head are nothing compared to what really happened...it forces him to accept that Beth has been through something horrible. And this realization brings on a lot of guilt for him. To him, it's almost as if this is all his fault. He's viewing things as: if I would have gotten out of the funeral home time, if I would have kept looking instead of sitting down in the middle of the road, I would have been able to find Beth and save her from what she went through. He is blaming himself for what happened to him. And he is furious with the men who hurt her.
> 
> Also, I am extremely excited for the next chapter. So far all of the chapters have either been form Beth's POV or Daryl's POV, but the next chapter will be from Maggie's POV. I think that it is extremely important to get Maggie's point of view on things; I mean, after all, Beth is her little sister, and something like this would greatly affect Maggie. There will be something big in this chapter, something that will give us a clue as to what Beth went through. We won't get much information on it, and some of my reader's may overlook it and not think that much of it, but it will definitely be a clue as to how bad Beth had it. It will further be explained in Ch.14, which will be from Beth's POV. So I hope that you are all looking forward to it!
> 
> Please leave a review and tell me what you think!


	13. Chapter 13

Ch.13

            _Maggie slowly made her way to Beth’s room, stopping in front of the closed door.  It had been two days since Beth’s suicide attempt, and Beth hadn’t exited her room.  Maggie remembered the sinking feeling in her gut she had felt when she had seen the blood dripping from Beth’s wrist.  And she had cringed when she had been the one to clean up the mess in Beth’s bathroom, her heart breaking when she had picked up the bloody shard of glass Beth had used._

_“Hey,” Maggie said softly, pushing the door open and stepping into the room.  “Are you up for a visitor?”_

_“Do I have a choice?” Beth asked quietly, turning her head so that she was looking at Maggie._

_Maggie closed the door and walked over to Beth’s bed, sitting down on the edge of it. She didn’t miss the way Beth retracted her wrist and hid it under the blankets so that Maggie couldn’t see the bandage._

_“No, not really,” Maggie said, offering Beth a weak smile as she brushed back a loose strand of hair on Beth’s forehead._

_Beth slowly sat up in her bed, being sure to keep her wrist hidden under the blankets._

_“How’re you feeling?”_

_“Tired.”_

_Maggie nodded slightly. “Do you need anything?”_

_“No…”_

_“When was the last time you had somethin’ to eat?”_

_“Daddy brought me up food a little bit ago, made sure that I ate it all, too.”_

_Maggie didn’t say anything, letting a heavy silence hang in the air, waiting for Beth to say more_

_“He says that he’s not mad at me,” Beth said after a few moments.  “He said that he’s not mad, he’s just disappointed,” Beth said sadly. “I didn’t…I didn’t mean to disappoint him.”_

_“I know that you didn’t.”_

_“I just…it felt like the right thing to do, you know.  I just wanted it to end.  I know that it was wrong…what I did was wrong and I won’t do it again.  But at the time it felt like the right thing to do, the only thing to do. I’m so—“_

_“Hey, hey,” Maggie said quietly, stopping Beth from finishing what she was going to say.   She reached a hand out and gently grabbed Beth’s chin, bringing Beth’s face to look Maggie directly in the eyes.  “You don’t have to explain yourself to me, okay? You did what you did, but now it’s in the past…we just gotta move on.  I know that you’re not gonna do that again.  I believe you.”_

_Beth looked at Maggie, her eyes brimming with tears, before slowly nodding.  Maggie frowned slightly when she saw the way Beth was biting her bottom lip in an attempt to keep it from trembling.  Slowly letting go of Beth’s chin, Maggie placed her hand back in her lap, keeping her eyes on Beth._

_“There’s something we need to talk about.”_

_Beth didn’t say anything, but kept her eyes on Maggie, sniffling quietly._

_“Remember what you told me before?  How you said all those things about the farm bein’ overrun and us having nobody to protect us?”_

_Beth nodded a little, opening her mouth to speak, but Maggie quickly cut her off._

_“I’m not going to tell you that it’s not going to happen, I’m not going to say that the farm isn’t going to be overrun.  I want to tell you that we’ll be able to stay here, that we’ll be safe here, but I can’t promise you that. I want to, but I can’t. There’s a good chance that we’ll have to leave the farm, and I want you to be prepared for that.”_

_Maggie stopped for a moment, keeping her eyes locked on Beth, wanting to make sure that she was listening to her.  She gave Beth a moment to let her words sink in before she continued._

_“But I can promise you that no matter what happens, you’re going to be fine, you’re going to be safe. I’m not going to let anybody or anything hurt you.  Okay? I promise you that nothing will hurt you.”_

* * *

 

            “She finally calmed down,” Maggie said sadly, leaning against a tree.

            Beth was still sitting by the fire, a blanket wrapped loosely around her to help her stay warm.  Nobody was by her. Everyone had come to a mutual, unspoken agreement that they would give Beth her space right now.

            Maggie had stayed with her and held her as Beth had sobbed, burying her face into Maggie’s chest in an attempt to muffle the loud noises escaping her throat.  And in turn, Maggie had rubbed small circles on Beth’s back, holding her close and rocking them back and forth in an attempt to calm Beth down, something she and Beth’s mother had done when Beth was a little girl and would wake up from a nightmare or would get hurt.  The only difference now was that Beth’s nightmare was real and the injuries told a story.

            “Can I ask you something?” Maggie asked, casting a glance over at Bob, who was standing next to her, watching Beth closely.

            “Yeah,” Bob replied quietly.

            “Do you think she’s pregnant?”

            Bob slowly turned his head to look at Maggie, shrugging his shoulders slightly. “I don’t know, Maggie. I don’t really know all that much about what happened to her.  I can’t just look at her and tell.”

            Maggie frowned and nodded, looking back towards Beth.  She desperately wanted to know if Beth was pregnant. She needed to know. She needed to know what they were dealing with.

            Bob sighed softly, still looking at Maggie.  “Do you know when her last period was?”

            This immediately brought Maggie’s attention back to Bob. “Um, no.  I mean, yeah, but I don’t have an exact date. She said that she’s late, that she hasn’t had it since the prison…”

            Maggie knew that she should feel uncomfortable having this conversation, that she should feel uncomfortable talking about such a personal matter concerning her sister to a man.  But she wasn’t. If Bob could give her answers, she’d tell him anything.

            Bob hung his head for a moment before looking back at Maggie. “That’s been almost three months, Maggie…everything at the prison happened almost three months ago…”

            “I know,” Maggie whispered shakily.

            “Are her periods usually irregular?”

            “No,” Maggie answered quickly.

            She knew the answer to that.  She had been responsible for getting all of the feminine care products while they had been at the prison, and because of this, she knew everyone’s cycle, including Beth’s.  Beth had never missed a period, sure, there had been a few times where it had been a few days late, but it had never been this late.

            “Maggie,” Bob said solemnly.  “Given what she’s been through…the rape,” he said hesitantly, carefully watching Maggie’s visible reaction to the word.  “The odds are…there’s a pretty good chance that she’s pregnant.”

            Maggie knew that her eyes were filled with tears, and she was almost certain that a few had escaped and were now trailing down her face, but she didn’t wipe them away.  She didn’t know if she could deal with Beth being pregnant.  She didn’t know if Beth could deal with being pregnant.  She didn’t know what all Beth had been through, but she knew that if she was pregnant the baby would be a constant reminder of her story.

            “I could be wrong, though, Maggie.  Her period could just be late…sometimes that happens. She’s had sex now, and that changes things, messes with hormones, sometimes it throws them off balance. It could be late because of the condition she was in when we found her.  She was malnourished, starved, dehydrated, emotionally, physically, and mentally exhausted.  Or it could be late because of all the stress she’s been under.”

            Maggie nodded.

            “We won’t know unless she takes a pregnancy test.”

            “She already said that she’s not going to do that.  And I’m not going to force her to…she doesn’t need anyone forcing her to do anything right now...”

            “Then we’re just going to have to wait and see.  If she is pregnant, we’ll get her what she needs, make sure we find someplace safe for her to rest and relax.”

            “We’ll get her through it,” Maggie said doubtfully.

            “We will, Maggie.  We’ll get her through it.  Even if she’s not pregnant, we’ll get her through what she’s going through now.”

            “Yeah, we will,” Maggie said quietly, her voice barely audible. “We’ll get her through it, we have to.”

            “Do you think you can try to clean her wounds?  Maybe she’ll let you.  They need to be cleaned.  I don’t want them to get infected.”

            “I can try, but I wouldn’t count on it.  I don’t think she wants anyone to see them…”

            “I know.  Just see if she’ll let you,” Bob said, handing Maggie the first aid kit.  “Make sure you clean them well.  If anything looks like it’s getting infected, let me know.”

            “I will,” Maggie mumbled, starting to walk towards Beth.

            Beth didn’t look at Maggie when she knelt down beside her, and Maggie took the moment to watch Beth’s face.  Her expression was blank, emotionless, and Maggie could tell that she was exhausted.  Dark circles were under her eyes and she was pale, paler than usual.  Beth had the blanket wrapped tightly around her as her eyes remained glued to the fire.

            “Bethy?” Maggie whispered.

            Beth glanced at Maggie out of the corner of her eyes before looking back to the fire, which was now starting to die.       

            “Bethy, we need to clean your wounds.  Will you let me clean your wounds?”

            Beth shook her head no, the movement barely noticeable.

            “I know that you don’t want me to, but we need to…you don’t want anythin’ to get infected,” Maggie said softly, brushing a loose strand of hair out of Beth’s eyes.

            Beth remained silent.

            “It’s just gonna be you and me…nobody else is gonna watch. Nobody else is going to see anything, I promise.  See, look around, nobody’s looking at us.”

            Beth looked at Maggie for a moment before looking around at their make-shift camp.  Nobody was looking at them. Everyone was busy doing their own things. Rick and Carl were playing with Judith. Daryl was skinning a squirrel, his full attention focused on the task at hand, and Maggie could tell that something was eating at him, and she had a pretty good idea that it had to do with Beth.

            “See…nobody’s watchin’ us, nobody’s gonna see.  It’s just you and me right now.  Okay?”

            Beth looked at Maggie again and slowly nodded her head.

            “Let’s get this off you,” Maggie said, smiling weakly, setting down the first aid kit and reaching out and unwrapping the blanket from around Beth.

            She waited a moment before she gently grabbed one of Beth’s arms, slowly helping Beth take her shirt off.  Once the shirt was removed, she place it next to her, making sure that it was close enough for Beth to reach if she suddenly panicked.  She looked at Beth, examining all of the different scars and cuts and bruises, trying to decide where to start first, eventually deciding to start with Beth’s back and shoulders.           

            She considered talking to Beth, thought about trying to start a conversation to get Beth to relax and forget about what Maggie was doing, forget about the memories that Maggie knew were racing through Beth’s mind. But she didn’t talk; she didn’t make a noise, because she couldn’t.  She couldn’t form any other thoughts in her head other than images that were in front of her: the bite marks on Beth’s shoulders, the long jagged scars on her back.

            Once she was sure that she had thoroughly cleaned the cuts on her back and shoulders, Maggie moved to Beth’s front.  Her eyes immediately zeroed in on the teeth marks just peeking out of the top of Beth’s bra.  They weren’t cuts, they were scars, scars that wouldn’t go away, scars that would mark Beth’s body forever.  And the cuts on her stomach, the ones just showing above the top of Beth’s jeans, were worse than Maggie had originally thought.  Some of them were deep, and Maggie was sure that they probably would have needed stitches if someone had been there to give Beth stitches when she first got the injuries.  Others were scabbed over, pink flesh showing through where the scab had started to come off, revealing a fresh scar.  But there were some that were healed completely; the puckered skin the only clue that there had been an injury.

            Maggie didn’t think that she could take anymore of what she was seeing; she didn’t think that it could get any worse.  She was just finishing up, almost completely done looking over Beth’s torso, only having one side left to look at.  She carefully nudged Beth’s right arm, encouraging her to move it so that Maggie could look at her side.  She didn’t think twice about the way that Beth hesitated to move, the long pause between the nudge and the actual action of Beth moving her arm should have been a clue. But as soon as Beth’s arm was out of the way, and Beth’s right side was visible to her, she saw why Beth had hesitated.

            Maggie stared at Beth’s side, her eyes scanning over the flesh, her stomach sinking.  Without realizing what she was doing, Maggie slowly brought her hand to Beth’s side, only stopping when her fingertips touched Beth’s skin, and she barely even heard the quiet gasp that escaped Beth’s lips.  Her fingers began to lightly trace over what she was seeing, her eyes brimming with tears.

            Beneath her fingertips was a scar, but it wasn’t like the others. It wasn’t jagged and uneven. It wasn’t made from a knife being held against Beth’s skin to keep her still, leaving behind a shapeless mark. This one had a shape. The top of the scar went from the bottom of the band of Beth’s bra, finally ending at Beth’s waist. It was an “A.”

            Maggie glanced up at Beth and their eyes locked, and Maggie saw in that moment the darkness that Beth had been talking to them about, a darkness that she had never seen in anyone before.  And for a moment she didn’t recognize the girl in front of her. Eyes that had once been so full of hope and life were now drained; the bright baby blues she had associated with Beth were now replaced with a dull grey.  Her eyes were haunted, and Maggie realized that she was afraid to hear the story behind these haunted eyes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So this chapter was from Maggie's POV, something that we haven't had before...and I think that I really like it. The beginning and the ending are very important. The beginning is a flashback, taking place a few days after Beth's suicide attempt. It addresses pretty much everything that Beth said to Maggie, all of Beth's fears that the farm would be overrun and that they would have nobody to protect them...the fear that Beth would become a walker. Maggie sits down and promises Beth that no matter what happens, she won't let anything happen to Beth...not a walker, not a person, nothing will ever hurt her. But it turns out that that promise is broken..it's a promise that Maggie couldn't keep. Beth was hurt, emotionally, physically, and mentally. 
> 
> The ending of the chapter is just as important. Maggie's going about cleaning Beth's wounds, and she's just about to finishes up, thinking that Beth's wounds are already bad enough and that they couldn't possibly get worse. But then she looks at Beth's right side and sees that scar...a scar that is in the shape of an "A." And Maggie looks into Beth's eyes, and she sees that darkness, and for Maggie to see that in her little sister says a lot. Maggie, out of everyone in the group, should be able to look at Beth and still see that spark of the girl that she was; but when she looks at Beth, all she sees is a stranger, a girl who isn't even a shell of the person that Maggie knew. It's a pretty big and defining moment for Maggie.
> 
> The next chapter will be from Beth's POV. It is going to focus around that scar. We will get to hear how she got it, the story behind it, which will give some insight into Beth's darkness.
> 
> Please leave a review and tell me what you think!


	14. Chapter 14

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: This chapter contains violence and coarse language.

Ch.14

            _She awoke to hands around her ankles, pulling her body until it was flush against the floor, until the chains binding her hands to the rusted pipe was pulled taught.  And then she felt as a body rested itself between her legs, the only barrier between her and the man being the man’s own clothing, causing her to immediately start crying.  She had become familiar with this sensation, and as much as the men’s faces had started to blend together the night before, she remembered his face._

_She had only been here a few days.  They had kept her blindfolded and hadn’t given her any food or water.  She hadn’t understood why they had taken her, but the answers to all of her questions had been answered the previous night when the man with the blond hair walked in the room, closing the door behind him._

_At first she had thought that he was going to let her go.  He had taken off the blindfold and had unchained her hands from the wall. But then he had reached for her and had forced her shirt off of her.  And she had fought back, had fought back with all of the strength she had, but she was weak, and she realized that that was why they hadn’t given her anything to eat or drink; they had been waiting for her body to weaken so that she couldn’t fight back.  Adrenaline had been coursing through her body, though, and she fought even when the man had put the chains back on her, even when he had taken all of her clothes off. She hadn’t quit fighting until she physically couldn’t fight any longer, and that’s when she had just let it happen. Man after man had used her, used her body for their pleasure.  They had left her bloody, bruised, and beaten, lying naked with her hands chained to that rusted pipe._

_This man, the man resting between her legs, the pressure of his arousal pressing against her, he had been the second.  His hands had raked across her body, touching and grasping at every inch of skin he possibly could, groping her breasts as he had continued his assault on her as she had begged for his mercy, had begged for him to stop.  And now, his eyes were boring into her, a wicked smile playing on his lips, a soft chuckle escaping his throat as his eyes began to roam her naked body._

_Suddenly, he lowered his head, his nose lightly running from her chin to just behind her ear, inhaling her scent deeply, causing her to shudder, the tears rolling down the sides of her face dampening her hair.  One of his hands came up to gently cup her breast, causing her entire body shake in fear. She knew where this was leading, and she desperately wished that she could be anywhere else with anyone else._

_“Ya’ know, I may not have been the first to have you,” he said quietly, his voice gruff and hard. “But you’re still mine,” he said, pulling away from her a little so that he could look at her face._

_Beth watched as he removed his hand from her breast, tucking it into his pocket and pulling out a small pocketknife. He flipped the blade up, shifting it around slightly so that the dim light of the room reflected off of the metal surface._

_“That bitch Connor got you first,” he said, bringing the knife to the nape of her neck. “Fucker’s good at poker, won the game, got the girl…got you,” he said roughly, beginning to drag the knife down the valley between her breasts, his eyes following every movement of the blade, being careful not to cut the flawless skin under it._

_“But I’m alright with that. He got you weak, made it to where you gave me just right amount of fight, but weren’t strong enough to fight back with all of your strength…made it easier for me to subdue you. And let me just say, I had a fuckin’ good time last night…you’re so fuckin’ tight._

_“Let me guess…you’re a virgin, aren’t you?” he asked, momentarily stopping the movement of the blade, pausing a moment to think, a smirk forming on his lips.  “I should rephrase that: you were a virgin, weren’t you?”_

_The man continued dragging the knife against her skin, bringing the blade lower and lower on her body. He brought it past her bellybutton and to her waist before stopping again._

_“I’ve been with a lot of women, but none of them have been like you.  You were…you reacted exactly the way I like.  Most girls don’t have enough fight left in them, but you…you just kept goin’, kept fightin’…it makes it more fun, more…exhilarating. And I never used to be into blondes, I always go for brunettes…they turn me on…but you…I think that you’re the exception to that,” he said slowly._

_“But you see, there’s a problem.  You were with all of my men last night; they all had their way with you.  That’s a problem.  I need them to know who you belong to; I need you to know who’s you are. You’re not their’s…you’re mine,” he said sternly.  “And I need you to know that,” he said, bringing the knife to her right side, against her ribcage. “So I’m going to give you something that will make you remember that, something that will never go away; just think of it as a constant reminder.”_

_And Beth screamed in pain as she felt the blade cutting into her skin, as she felt the warmth of her own blood running down her side._

* * *

 

            Beth felt Maggie’s eyes on her, traveling across the expanse of her side. She knew what she saw; she knew why Maggie’s body had become rigid, frozen.  And Beth couldn’t help the gasp that escaped her throat as Maggie brought her hand to the marred skin.  She couldn’t help the way she shivered or the way her skin broke out in goose bumps as Maggie’s fingers began to trace the scar on her side.

            It took everything in her to bring her eyes to look at Maggie. She didn’t know why she did it, maybe it was because she wanted to see Maggie’s reaction to the scar, or maybe it was because she needed to see Maggie’s reaction.  Whatever the reason was, she knew that she would never forget the way Maggie looked at her, like she was a wounded animal trapped in a corner, like she was a stranger.

            Without warning, Maggie grabbed Beth’s shirt.  “Let’s get this back on you, okay?” she asked shakily, trying her best to hide the way her voice was wavering, but failing.

            Beth let Maggie put the oversized shirt on her.  She didn’t even assist her.  She just sat there, letting Maggie maneuver her arms into the shirt as if she were a small child.  Just as Maggie had been frozen when she had seen the scar, Beth was now frozen.

            Beth was surprised when Maggie didn’t leave her, instead sitting down beside her, mimicking the way Beth was sitting: their knees pulled to their chests, their arms wrapped tightly around their legs, their chins resting on their knees.  And their eyes were focused on the pile of ashes that had been the fire.  And Beth found their companionable silence oddly comforting, and before she knew it, she was speaking.

            “It stands for ‘Anthony,’” she said quietly.

            “What?” Maggie asked confusedly, turning her head slightly to look at Beth.

            “The scar…the A…it stands for Anthony.”

            Beth waited for Maggie to say something, but she didn’t, she just kept staring at Beth.

            “I know that you saw it, Maggie. “

            “We can just forget about it, Beth…you don’t have to talk about it…”

            “I know that I don’t have to, but I know that you’re gonna keep thinking about it…”

            Maggie nodded her head a little and Beth finally turned her had to look at Maggie.

            “His name was Anthony,” she repeated.  “H-he was the second one to…” Beth trailed off, swallowing the lump in her throat.

            “Beth…you don’t have to talk ab-“

            “He was the second one to rape me,” Beth said, cutting Maggie off. “You wanna know how they decided who would get me first?” she asked, not waiting for Maggie to answer before she continued.  “They played poker, Maggie…that’s all that I was worth to them,” she said, laughing sadly. “I was the winner’s prize. A game of poker decided it for them…”

            Maggie looked down sadly, and Beth saw the way that her fingers began to dig into the soft dirt, trying her hardest to control her anger, her hurt.

            “But Anthony, he didn’t win…he got me second.  And then he gave me this,” Beth said, lifting her shirt up a little to show the very bottom of the scar.

            “Why?” Maggie whispered, closing her eyes for a moment before reopening them, focusing all of her attention on Beth.

            “So that the other’s knew that I was his.  So that I knew that I was his.  So that no matter what happened, I’d always remember what they did to me…”

            “But he’s dead, right?  Y-you killed him….”

            Beth wanted to scoff.  She wanted to laugh.  She wanted to roll her eyes at Maggie’s question.  But most of all, she wanted to tell Maggie yes.  She wanted to be able to say that she had killed him, that Anthony was dead. But she couldn’t.

            “No,” she said, her voice small.

            She saw Maggie’s mouth open, and she knew that she was about to ask a question, but Abraham quickly walking back into camp caught both of their attention. His expression was stern, serious. Beth didn’t know the man that well, she hadn’t bothered getting to know him, but she knew that something was wrong.

            “Walkers. We gotta go.  Now!” he ordered.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So there's the answer to the "A." I got a few reviews asking if the "A" was like the a scarlet letter, and the answer to that is yes and no. Technically, it's not. Technically it was just a way for Anthony to mark his property...he branded her. But to Beth, it is a constant reminder of what happened to her.
> 
> Also, I sort of left the chapter with a cliffhanger...I had to get walkers back into the story. Hmmm, I wonder what will happen.
> 
> Please leave a review and tell me what you think!


	15. Chapter 15

Ch.15

            “Shit,” Daryl said when he heard the groans of the walkers.

            Abraham had just come back into camp a few minutes ago with the news of approaching walkers, but Daryl hadn’t thought that they were this close.   Everyone was still gathering up their things.  They didn’t have much, but they needed what they had, so they couldn’t leave anything behind.

            He had been skinning a squirrel, trying to keep his mind off of Beth, off of what she had been through.  Maggie had been cleaning Beth’s injuries, and Daryl refused to look at them, he couldn’t bring his eyes to look at Beth; he didn’t want to see the scars and cuts and bruises.  They were his fault. Everything that had happened to Beth was his fault, and there was no way that he would ever be able to repay her for what had happened to her, and he knew that no amount of sorry would ever make up for what she had gone through.

            And when Abraham had come back to camp, he didn’t hesitate to toss the half-skinned squirrel to the side and grab his crossbow, slinging it over his shoulder. He rushed over to Maggie and Beth, tossing their things into their bags for them.

            “Get your shit.  We gotta go,” he mumbled harshly, still refusing to look at Beth.

            It didn’t register until a few moments later that those were the exact words he had said to Beth the night she had been taken.  He had told her to go to the road, had promised to meet her there, had promised to himself that he would get out of the funeral home and to the road, to Beth.  But all of those promises were broken.  He hadn’t been able to keep her safe. 

            Without wasting another moment, he tossed Beth’s bag at her. He wouldn’t be responsible for her right now.  He couldn’t risk losing her again like he had lost her at the funeral home.  She had Maggie right now.  Had Glenn.  Rick. Michonne.  Sasha.  Anybody would be better for her than he was, and he knew that they would all be keeping a close eye on her right now.

            He quickly moved away from Beth and Maggie, going over to his bag and tossing it onto his back.  He glanced up to see the small herd approaching, their feet shuffling against the fallen leaves and twigs littering the ground.  And within a matter of seconds, the entire group was moving, trying their hardest to be silent.  The herd was approaching them from all sides now, and what he once had thought was a small herd that they could easily outrun, was now a large herd.  They would have to fight their way out.

            He swiftly removed his crossbow from his shoulder, aiming it and shooting the nearest walker in the head.  Everyone else was beginning to do the same, slowly moving their way through the herd. Judith’s loud cries were piercing through the groans of the walkers, but Daryl knew that the baby was safe, tucked away in her makeshift carrier on Rick’s back. 

            Daryl’s heart sunk when he looked towards Maggie and didn’t see Beth there. He had been casting random glances at Beth, making sure that she was okay, and Beth had never been out of arms reach of her sister.  But now she was nowhere to be seen, and the walkers were getting denser.

            “Where the hell is Beth?!” he yelled, slowly moving his way towards Maggie. 

            “I-I don’t know.  She was here. But now she’s just gone.”

            “Fuck,” Daryl muttered, frantically looking around.

            He was too concerned in finding Beth to notice the walker closing in on him from his left.  He heard the snapping of a twig and quickly turned, the walker just inches from him, it’s mouth opened and ready to bite.  Just as he reached down to unsheathe his knife, the walker froze, it’s body crumpling to the ground.

            Beth was standing in front of him, her knife clutched tightly in her hand. The blade of the knife was covered in dark blood, walker blood.  He was about to say something, but his attention was caught by the walker quickly moving towards Beth.  He lifted his crossbow to shoot it in the head, but Beth swung her arm out, the knife going straight into the soft skull of the deteriorating walker with a sick squelching sound.

            He wanted to say something to her, but he couldn’t think of the words to say, and there were still walkers.  He reached out and grabbed Beth’s arm, beginning to pull her behind himself, motioning for Maggie to follow them.  The rest of the group followed closely in their tracks, taking down the stray walkers that had followed them away from the herd.  And once they reached the road, everyone was silent, trying to catch their breath.

            “When’d ya’ learn to do that?” Daryl asked after they had been walking for some time. 

            Beth shrugged her shoulders, wiping the blade of her knife on her jeans, the knife that he had given her after prison.

            “I knew you could kill ‘em, but I never saw ya’ do it like that…like it was nothing.”

            “It is nothing,” Beth mumbled, quickening her pace so that she was no longer walking beside him.

            The group walked for hours before stopping.  Everyone was hungry and exhausted.  Judith had started to cry again; she needed to be fed, and Daryl assumed that she needed a diaper change.    They made sure to walk back into the woods.  They knew that the chances of someone coming down the road was slim, but they didn’t want to risk it.  They all knew the kind of people they could run into, and they wanted to avoid any conflict.

            Sasha and Carol started a small fire, just large enough to cook the squirrel and rabbit that Daryl had managed to shoot.  Carl and Michonne were sitting on the ground, Judith lying down on a blanket between them.  Rick was talking to Abraham, a map spread out and held in their hands; he knew that they were talking about D.C. and the best route to take to get there. Maggie was sitting next to Glenn, her eyes glued to Beth, who was sitting by herself, away from the rest of the group.

            Daryl sighed quietly, setting down his crossbow before walking over to Beth and sitting down next to her.  She was holding a dried leaf in her hand, squeezing it every once in awhile and causing more of the leaf to crumple into dust.  He remained quiet for a few moments, just watching her, observing her.

            “Hey,” he said quietly.

            He waited for her response, but it never came.  She remained silent, eyes staring blankly at the leaf in her hand.

            “Look, Beth…I’m sorry.”

            Beth completely closed her hand over the leaf, squeezing it hard.

            “I’m sorry.”

            “Stop,” she said harshly. 

            “I’m sorry for everything that ha-“

            “I said to stop,” she said, cutting him off, turning her head and looking him directly in the eye.  “I don’t want to hear you saying that you’re sorry.  I don’t want to hear you saying how it’s all your fault, because it’s not. I don’t want to hear you saying how I didn’t deserve what happened to me.  I don’t want to hear that you’re sorry.  I swear to God, Daryl, if you say that you’re sorry I won’t hesitate to kill you.”

            And Daryl didn’t even think about saying anything to her after that, because the tone of her voice told him that she was being serious; she wouldn’t hesitate to kill him.  So he nodded slowly and stood back up, walking over to the fire and sitting down. But he could feel her eyes on him, watching him.  And he couldn’t help the sinking feeling in his heart that maybe she was right, maybe she had changed and had become someone unrecognizable.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I want to apologize for how long it has taken me to update. The last few weeks have been crazy busy with me. But the good news is that the semester is almost over, which means that I will be able to get back into the swing of things and have regular updates!
> 
> Also, I want to apologize for how short this chapter is...I blame it on all of the papers I've had to write for school. I promise that the next chapter will be longer. And, about the next chapter...I am extremely excited for it! I think that you all will like it, too...at least I hope that you do.
> 
> Please leave a review and tell me what you think!


	16. Chapter 16

Ch.16

            Beth woke early in the morning, cramps low in her back. She rolled so that she was lying on her back, the blankets bundled up around her.  She knew that Maggie had thrown more blankets on her after she had gone to sleep.  It had become her routine; Maggie would try to force Beth to take more blankets, Beth would refuse, but as soon as Beth had fallen asleep, Maggie would lay the blankets on her, insisting that she needed them more than anyone else.

            Looking up at the sky, Beth guessed that it couldn’t be later than six. The sun was just rising, the sky shades of pink and orange.  If it would have been a few months ago, she would have smiled, remembering all of the times that her and Maggie had sat outside at the farm watching the sun as it rose. But now, something as simple as a sunrise seemed so pointless; it was just another reminder of how much she had changed.

            Beth rubbed her eyes tiredly before standing up, noticing that everyone else was still asleep, other than Tyreese, who was on watch. She sluggishly started walking out of the camp, only stopping when she heard Tyreese’s voice.

            “Beth?” he asked quietly, causing her to glance over her shoulder at him.

            “What?” she mumbled.

            “Where are you going?”

            “I have to go to the bathroom.”

            “You know that Maggie doesn’t like you going anywhere by yourself.”

            “God,” Beth said, frustration heavy in her tone.  “I’m just going to the damn bathroom.  I’m not a toddler.  I can go by myself.”

            She didn’t give Tyreese a chance to reply before marching deeper into the woods, away from the camp.  She was getting sick of Maggie and everyone else treating her like she was fragile. Sure, they would give her space, but their eyes were always on her.

            Beth went behind a tree, glancing around to check for walkers before unzipping her pants and squatting down slightly.  The red stain in her underwear caught her attention, and she felt tears come to her eyes as a huge weight was lifted off of her shoulders. She had started her period. She wasn’t pregnant. She wasn’t carrying any of those men’s baby.

            Quickly, Beth finished and went back to camp, rummaging around in her bag until she found the box of tampons Maggie had given her a few weeks ago. She grabbed one and headed back into the woods, ignoring the glare Tyreese was giving her, and returned a few minutes later.

            “Where were you?” her sister’s voice called from a few feet away.

            Beth sat down on her pile of blankets, ignoring her sister.

            “Beth…I asked you a question,” Maggie said, slowly standing up and walking over to her sister, sitting down beside her.

            Beth remained quiet, jumping slightly when she felt her sister’s hand on her shoulder, squeezing it lightly.

            “You okay?” Maggie asked quietly, and Beth knew that se was trying to hide her true concern.

            “I’m not pregnant…” Beth whispered.

            “You know?”

            Beth nodded her head slowly.  “I just started.”

            She felt Maggie’s hand hesitate on her shoulder before her arm wrapped around her back, pulling her in for a tight hug, Maggie’s chin resting on top of her head.  Beth’s entire body stiffened, but Maggie didn’t loosen her grip.

            “That’s good, Beth.  That’s really good,” she said quietly.

            Beth swallowed hard, nodding her head. 

            Maggie pressed her lips to the top of Beth’s head before releasing Beth from the hug.  She gingerly reached her hand out and brushed a loose strand of hair out of Beth’s face, tucking it behind Beth’s ear.

            “Now we can focus on gettin’ you better.  Now you can try to move on from what happened…”

            Beth quickly looked away from her sister.  “There’s no getting better, Maggie.  There’s no moving on.”

            “I know that that’s what it seems like Beth, but there is. I know how strong you are. I know that you can make it through this.”

            Beth tilted her head and looked up at the sky, letting out a heavy sigh. “Why doesn’t anyone understand?” she asked, trying her hardest to keep her tone even.

            “What do you mean?” Maggie asked confusedly.

            “There’s no getting better.  This is who I am.  This is who I’ll always be. I’m broken.  There’s no fixing me, so stop trying,” she said harshly.

            “How about I just get you some breakfast…” Maggie said quietly after a few moments, standing up and walking away.

* * *

 

            _She slowly opened her eyes, the sun drifting in through her window, casting strange shadows on her bedroom wall. The house was quiet. Her mom and dad had taken a weekend trip to Amicalola Falls to celebrate their anniversary.  She was 13.  Maggie was in charge for the weekend._

_She knew that something had changed as soon as she moved, but she didn’t think anything of it until she went to the bathroom.  The red in her underwear causing her to panic._

_“Maggie!” she screamed, quickly walking out of the bathroom._

_She heard the shuffling of tired feet as they quickly made their way down the hall. She saw the worried expression on her older sister’s face._

_“Beth? What’s wrong?”_

_Beth looked down at her feet, her fingers nervously fumbling with the hem of her pajama shirt._

_“Beth?”_

_“I started…I started my period…”_

_Her sister immediately pulled her into a hug.  “It’s okay. You don’t gotta be embarrassed about it. It’s natural,” she said reassuringly._

_Beth nodded slowly._

_“Here,” Maggie said, taking Beth’s hand and dragging her to her room.  “Sit down,” she instructed, pointing to the bed._

_Beth sat down on the bed, watching as her sister went into her bathroom and came out with different things._

_“I know mom had the whole talk with you about this, but I can give it to you again if you need it.”_

_Beth shook her head no, looking down at her hands as Maggie pushed a pad and tampon into them._

_“Use whichever you’re more comfortable with,” she said with a small smile._

_A few minutes later, Beth came out of the bathroom, starting to fumble with the hem of her shirt again, causing Maggie to let out a quiet giggle._

_“My baby sister’s growing up.”_

_“Stop…”_

_“What?” Maggie asked, giggling again.  “You know that I like teasing you.  Plus, this is a big moment in your life.  You’re a woman now.”_

_Beth didn’t respond._

_“Want me to call mom? I’m sure they’d come home if you wanted her to be here…”_

_“No,” Beth said, shaking her head._

_Maggie nodded. “You know what’s gonna come next, right?”_

_“What?” Beth asked, furrowing her eyebrows and looking up at Maggie._

_“’The talk,’” she said, another laugh escaping her lips._

_Beth groaned. “I don’t wanna have ‘the talk.’”_

_“I know. That’s why it’s gonna be hilarious. Especially considering the way you reacted when you found my birth control pills.”_

_“Maggie…”_

_“What? It’s just sex, Beth. Nothin’ to be all embarrassed about. You get all freaked out by it…it’s cute.”_

_“Well, I’m not gonna do that anytime soon, so I don’t need t’have ‘the talk.’”_

_“You better not be messing around with any boys.  If a boy touches you, I’ll beat him up…so will Shawn.”_

* * *

 

            She was sitting by the fire.  They had walked all day, slowly making their to D.C.  She had listened over and over as Abraham discussed the importance of this mission. She had listened to Eugene describing what was waiting for them in D.C., but he was never willing to give any detailed information.  But now they were stopped for the night.

            “We should find a goddamn car or something,” Daryl mumbled, twirling one of his arrows between his fingers.  “It’d get us there a lot faster.”

            Everyone turned their attention to Judith when she started crying loudly, Daryl’s gaze shifting to Beth for the briefest of moments.  Nobody else knew that she wasn’t pregnant. She had only told Maggie. In fact, since telling Maggie, she hadn’t said a single word the rest of the day; she had remained completely silent, reserved to herself, keeping her distance from everyone.

            When Sasha handed a granola bar to her, she didn’t take it, causing the woman to sigh quietly and kneel down in front of her.  She set the granola bar on the ground, looking at Beth for a moment before speaking.

            “Hey,” she said softly, reaching a hand out and gently taking ahold of Beth’s, starting to unwrap the bandage around her wrist. “Your wrists are looking better. I was talking to Bob earlier today, he said that they probably won’t scar.”

            Beth shrugged her shoulders.  “What does it matter anyway,” she mumbled.

            Sasha frowned, releasing Beth’s hand.  “You wanna talk about anything?”

            “I want you to leave me alone.”

            “Beth…you know that what happened to you…nobody looks at you any differently.”

            “Well you should.”

            “You’re still you…you’re just…you just need to heal.”

            “Are you guys all really that blind?  If I were you, I would’ve just left me there on that road after you guys found me.  I don’t know how many times I have to tell you all that I’ve changed.  I’m not sweet little innocent Beth Greene.”

            “What those men did to you, Beth…you can come back from it. It’s just gonna take some time.”

            “Stop sounding like Maggie.  Stop being so optimistic.  You’ll see it…one of these days you’ll see how much I’ve changed, and you’ll realize that there’s no coming back from it.”

            “Beth…” Sasha trailed off, standing back up.  “Just eat something.  I haven’t seen you eat all day,” she said before walking away.

            And in that moment Beth realized what she needed to do. She had been slipping. The darkness inside of her had been seeping out.  Everyone had a vague idea of what had happened to her, and she realized that they all had the same hope, the same belief that she could honestly be the girl that she had been before. None of them were willing to open their eyes and see the truth that was in front of them.  And she didn’t want to hurt any of them. 

            She stayed awake as everyone settled down for the night, allowing Maggie to wrap the blankets around her before she settled herself down beside Glenn and drifted off to sleep.  Tara and Carol were on watch right now, but they would be switching with Rosita and Abraham in a few hours. 

            A little while later, everyone had fallen asleep, and she glanced over at her bag, sitting right beside her. Carol and Tara were idly chatting. They were distracted. She grabbed her bag and slowly stood up, being quiet as she started to walk away, the camp slowly disappearing behind her. 

            It didn’t hurt.  Leaving them didn’t hurt, because she knew that what she was doing was right. Nobody would want her when they found out who she really was.  She was saving them the heartache.  Sure, she knew that they would probably look for her, but soon enough they would realize that she didn’t want to be found and that her being away from them was for the better.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the delay...again. Blame it on the flu!
> 
> Anyways, I'm not really sure how I feel about this chapter. I had difficulty writing it. I knew what I wanted to happen in the chapter, but when it came to typing it, the words just didn't want to come. So, I may end up rewriting the chapter, but I'm not sure.
> 
> That being said, this is an important chapter. We finally got the answer to a big question...Beth is not pregnant! Also, Beth ends up sneaking off, running away from the group.
> 
> Please leave a review and tell me what you think!

**Author's Note:**

> This story is also posted over on ff.net, as well as two more of my fan fics.
> 
> "Changed" will have a lot of flashbacks. You may be asking why? Well, I don't want you to know exactly what happened to Beth or exactly how she escaped; I want it to remain a sort of mystery. As the story goes on, there will be more flashbacks, and more will be revealed about her abduction, captivity, and escape. All flashbacks will be in italics.
> 
> Please let me know what you think!


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